The Way of a Siluan
by heatherxenia
Summary: Three AgriCorps Jedi survive Order 66. One is shipwrecked in a remote forest and begins to learn the ways of a quiet sect of Lightsiders known as the Siluans. Another tries to run a farm but is nearly thwarted by the Imperial Agriculture Program. A third takes the path of a Dark Jedi, masterminds Imperial agriculture policy...and sets out to destroy the Siluans. Part I complete.
1. Assignment to the AgriCorp

**Introduction**

Since time immemorial, the Jedi gathered Force-sensitive children and raised them in the Jedi Temple to become knights who use the Force to defend peace and justice throughout the galaxy. Yet the Star Wars Legends also tell us that - whether due to poor attitude or lack of aptitude - not all Jedi younglings proved suitable for this high calling. Therefore, the Jedi Order instituted the AgriCorps, wherein young Jedi of lesser strength or suitability were trained to heal plants and otherwise aid the farmers of the galaxy.

Though in principle most Jedi knights respected the AgriCorps' intent and though some AgriCorps Jedi took pride in their role of service, assignment to this much less esteemed role was often seen by Jedi younglings as rejection and failure.

But there was more to the AgriCorps than failures and rejects. What you are about to read is the story of three AgriCorps Jedi and the paths of Light and Dark they take after surviving Order 66. It's the story of how two of them earned the the honour of being remembered long after many Jedi Knights and Masters had been forgotten, and why an offshoot of the Jedi AgriCorps still existed to carry on a spark of the Jedi legacy at the time of the First Order.

None of this would have happened without the quiet path of a Jedi youngling named Eo Cloudlee. Assigned to the AgriCorps just before Order 66, it's clear that she doesn't have what it takes to be a Jedi Knight, but in learning the ways of a little-known sect of Lightsiders known as the Siluans, she finds what she needs to give her fellow Jedi fighting chance against the Empire.

 **Characters**

The main characters are all OCs, but Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine are key figures throughout, as is Ahsoka Tano in Part II.

 **Canon and Timeline**

This story takes place mainly during 19 -13 BBY, the early years of the Galactic Empire. It fits alongside the canonical timeline of the events in SW movies and TV shows. While references are made to characters and/or situations from the prequels, SW Clone Wars and SW Rebels, I've written this story with the intent that it be accessible to readers who have only seen the original SW trilogy (Episodes IV – VI).

 **Rating**

This story is rated T for occasional instances of: language, violence and potentially disturbing scenes.

 **About the Author**

I'm a vegetable farmer/gardener with a background in agricultural science and genetics, hence my interest in writing about Force-adepts whose skill lies primarily in using the Force to connect with (and manipulate) plants, animals and fungi, etc.

 **Acknowledgements**

In my portrayal of the AgriCorps, I drew heavily on the work of **dave . davies .5851** in " **An AgriCorps Mystery**." Many thanks to dave . davies . 5851 for permission to incorporate and build on ideas from that work. (This website didn't like the use of a name with dots in it; please erase the spaces if you look him up.)

Many thanks to those who have offered helpful suggestions, corrections and comments on earlier drafts. In chronological order: Paula R, Rachel K, Charmaine W, Andrea B, Shannon C, Julia H, Carolyn R, and ChocolateTeapot of FanFiction. Further feedback and constructive criticism is most welcome!

This story is dedicated to my sister.

 **PART I**

 **The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 1: Assignment to the AgriCorps**

At the great Jedi Temple on Coruscant, it was morning, the morning in whose night the Jedi Order was destroyed. But it was still morning, and in the great vaulted spaces of the temple there was quiet. There Jedi younglings sat serene in their meditation, but in the administrative wing of the complex a young Jedi of about twelve hurried down a narrow corridor alone.

She was a human with black eyes and short black hair, small for her age, and skinny rather than slender. She kept her eyes down as she walked, looking worried. Someone had tapped her on the shoulder in the middle of morning meditation and asked her to go to Master Contar's office. Eo knew Master Contar to be a member of the Jedi Council of Reassignment, which decided whether Jedi younglings would go on to be Jedi knights, or whether they would be sent to the less skilled tasks of the Jedi Agricultural Corps. Eo wasn't quite old enough to be sent one way or another just yet, but she would be at the end of the year. What Master Contar would have to say, she wasn't sure she wanted to hear.

At the end of the hall, she stopped in front of a tall blue door. She paused for a moment with one hand over the knot in her stomach, but then she heard voices on the other side of the door. She took a deep breath, quickly smoothed out her hair with her fingers, and then knocked.

"Come in!" a stern voice called from inside.

Eo opened the door and saw Master Contar, a tall and rather pinched woman, sitting at a desk with a round little brown man standing beside her.

"Master Contar, you sent for me?" Eo asked, sounding a bit uncertain.

The Jedi master sniffed and motioned for Eo to enter.

"Eo, this is Ava Yen, an associate of the AgriCorps," Master Contar said, indicating the man beside her. "Ava Yen, this is Eo Cloudlee, the pupil I spoke of."

Eo and Ava Yen made a slight bow to each other. Master Contar cleared her throat.

"Eo, you are coming to the age at which a decision must be made about your future as a Jedi." She paused and looked at Eo, who simply nodded. "As you know, the Council of Reassignment considers carefully regarding the will of the Force as to whether each candidate is fit to become a Jedi knight, or whether they are more suited to the Service Corps." Master Contar paused again. Eo gave another nod. The knot in her stomach was getting tighter. "I am sure you can see for yourself that you lag behind your cohort in many ways," the older Jedi said.

"Master Contar," Eo said, "I'm trying..."

"I did not say that you lacked effort. You are simply not strong enough in the Force to warrant full training as a Jedi knight. In addition, your blood test shows a much lower level of midi-chloridians than was found when you were first brought here."

Eo hung her head; she found no words to reply to this.

"We were planning to wait until the end of the year, but since Ava Yen is here now, we will simply matters by sending you with him to the AgriCorps station on Deema. Deema is a rather important research site, and so after your basic training you will be reassessed for assignment to one of the less important AgriCorps projects." Master Contar's tone suggested that she did not consider Eo suitable for anything but the lowest levels of the AgriCorps, in which young Jedi spent all day walking up and down endless rows of crops, pulling weeds and trying to effuse energy through the Force to help the crops grow better.

Ava Yen, who had been observing quietly until this time, turned sharply to Master Contar. "If she is willing, I will bring her with me," he said firmly. "I came only as a pilgrim; I will not bring Eo with me against her will."

Eo looked up Ava Yen with surprise; his consideration for her was a kindness she had not expected. Yet the Council of Reassignment had spoken. If Eo refused to serve with the AgriCorps, the only other option would be for her to completely leave the Jedi Order, the only life she'd ever known. "I'll go," she said, but bowed her head to hide her tears.

Master Contar looked coldly at Eo. Some degree of shame and disappointment was to be expected, but to Master Contar, tears were proof that Eo was especially unfit.

"Eo, you are a big girl now," Master Contar said, condescendingly. "There is no shame in those of lesser skill using such powers as they have to aid the farmers of the galaxy. I am sure you will find agriculture to be within the scope of your capabilities."

Ava Yen looked narrowly at Master Contar, and then seeing that Eo had nothing to say, broke in. "I suggest, then, if Eo agrees, that we leave immediately," he said, "unless of course Master Contar has other intentions."

Master Contar looked pleased. "May the Force be with you," she said with a note of mere formality, and sniffed again. Ava Yen and Eo both made a slight bow to her and turned out the door.

Eo had to trot to keep up with Ava Yen as he walked quickly away from Master Contar's office. A Jedi has no possessions and no attachments, so there were no belongings to collect and no goodbyes to be said. Instead they made their way directly down the great pillared hall toward the main entrance of the Temple. As they came to the throng of pilgrims at the great door, Eo turned and looked back into the great quiet of the Temple for the last time.


	2. Life in the Temple

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 2: Life in the Temple**

"Eo, please focus," Luminara Unduli said sternly. It was her third reminder.

Seven years before Eo's assignment to the AgriCorps, Eo stood on the soft but firm tatami floor of a Jedi training room with fifteen other five-year-olds of her clan, as each cohort of Jedi younglings was called. Each stood in quiet focus, each levitating a coloured handkerchief at about knee-height in front of them. Except Eo. Her yellow piece of cloth still lay on the ground. She scowled at it.

"Focus," Master Luminara said again.

There is a particular breed of frustration known to small children, the frustration of knowing with perfect clarity exactly how you feel yet being unable to express it, especially to an adult. Eo felt herself caught up in this very frustration now. Couldn't Master Luminara see how much she was focusing? Couldn't she see how hard she was trying?

Five-year-old Eo couldn't express this. She felt hot, anger tears well up behind her eyes, but barred them from falling and stared at that yellow handkerchief on the tatami mat, focusing all the more. The angry tears became power, and the handkerchief jerked up into the air, not floating gently like the other children's, but stiff and taut.

Luminara shook her head. "If you channel your anger," she said, "you can do many things, but it will only be through the Dark Side of the Force. That is not the way of the Jedi. Please try again."

Eo shrank down under Luminara's knowing gaze and the handkerchief fell to the ground. All the other children turned to look at her, their focus broken, and a rainbow of handkerchiefs lay scattered on the floor. Hot humiliation engulfed Eo and she turned and ran out of the training room.

"Eo, come back!" Luminara called after her, but she ran down the great hall and back to her dormitory, where she crawled under one of the bunk-beds and hid there, thinking hot, angry thoughts. All the children in the Temple were brought there because someone thought they were strong in the Force. So why then couldn't she keep up with the other children?

Eo stiffened, hearing a soft footstep in the room. Was it Master Luminara, or was it one of the other children? She wasn't ready to face them yet.

But the footsteps were of an adult, not a child, and Eo heard a voice singing softly in another language. A woman's voice, a woman laying fresh towels at the head of each bed.

Eo peeked out from under the bed. She could only see her back, but it was Naomi, a Twilek who served as one of the nannies and housekeepers for the Jedi younglings. Eo drew back, but Naomi turned around and looked under the bed.

"Eo! You've been crying!" Naomi said in her thick Twilek accent. "Come!" she said, and held her arms open.

Eo hesitated for a moment, but then a child-instinct took over and she scrambled out from under the bed. Naomi pulled Eo up against her breast, and Eo could smell the resinous scent of laundry detergent on Naomi's blue work apron. Eo felt her body relax. Naomi set Eo back on the ground, and knelt down beside her, putting one arm around Eo and brushing Eo's hair back from her face with the hand of the other. "What's the matter?" Naomi asked gently.

Eo sniffed. "I can't lift the handkerchief like everyone else!" she said, but with painful clarity what she really thought was _Why am I here? I don't belong!_

Naomi kissed her forehead. "It is not a mistake that you are here," she said. "It is the will of the Force for you to be here with us. You will find your way as a Jedi, you will see."

Little Eo did not look particularly convinced.

"Never mind what you can't do," Naomi said. "If you are quiet inside, you will hear a small voice, very small at first but if you listen it will become bigger. Just listen, and the voice will tell you how to find your own path in the Force, the one that is right for you."

With Naomi's arm around her, Eo looked into Naomi's wrinkled face and did feel quiet inside again. She nodded solemnly at Naomi's words. Naomi smiled her broad, toothy smile. "Come!" she said again, "you can help me if you want. We'll lay out the towels and then set the tables for dinner."

Eo smiled back and Naomi got up to go about her work, with Eo trotting behind her. By the time they finished the pre-dinner chores, the other children were still at evening meditation. Eo slipped in quietly, grateful to have a way to come back unnoticed. She sat cross-legged on the same tatami mat where she had stood before, and gathering herself together, she closed her eyes and began to breathe slowly and evenly.

It felt so different from earlier. Even if she was too young to put it into words, the frustration she'd felt earlier had divided and scattered her, and the power it gave her was paralyzing. Here in meditation, she felt gathered together again, peaceful, whole and well. As she let her thoughts go, a sense of warmth and light settled over Eo, like Naomi's arm around her shoulders. In that warmth and light, Eo felt small, but perfectly safe and truly free. She had no words for it, but with the perfect clarity of a child's feelings she knew _I want to have this Light within me. I want it more than anything._

That was seven years ago. The years that followed that five-year-old day were marked by episodes like that: the frustrations of undertaking training that she wasn't cut out for, the encouragement of Naomi and others in the Temple to _Remember it is the will of the Force that you are here; keep trying and you'll find a way_ , and moments of Light to carry her along.

Now, as she stood on the brink of adolescence, Eo was assigned to the AgriCorps. Whether it was the will of the Force or not, she was carried in Ava Yen's little passenger starship, on their way to the AgriCorps station on Deema, a planet she'd never even heard of before.


	3. The Crash

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 3: The Crash**

While Ava Yen piloted his little passenger starship to the edge of Coruscant airspace, Eo sat in the small hold behind the cockpit, looking down at her toes. The shame of rejection lay heavily on her, but she wasn't surprised. For quite some time Eo had sensed that she wasn't really keeping pace with the other Jedi younglings. Simple things, like the telekinesis of a piece of cloth, were challenging for her. She could easily sense the Force in the little bugs that buzzed around the Temple in the summer, or in the weeds growing in the cracks of the sidewalk outside, but sensing the Force in the minds of people was all but impossible for her, making it unlikely that she would ever master the art of Jedi mind control.

She sighed, looking down at the scuff marks on her brown shoes. She had tried, she had really tried. She had lived in the Temple her whole remembered life, and loved the way of the Jedi with its meditation and study, the rigours of physical training, and the call to compassion for all life. She'd worked hard at her training in hopes that one of the Jedi knights would indeed take her under their wing and help her find her own path as a Jedi. Now that hope was totally dashed.

Could she perhaps find a mentor among the Jedi of the AgriCorps? Eo doubted it, and now that doubt gnawed at her and made a pit in her stomach. Her general impressions of the AgriCorps Jedi were not good. Once she'd overhead two of them talking in the Temple. They had quietly mocked an elderly Jedi who was meditating nearby, and laughed about their own disregard for the practice. Having heard other rumours that AgriCorps members tended to be rather careless about following the Jedi Code (and about tending to the younger Jedi in their care), she had worked all the harder not to be made one of them.

Yet Ava Yen didn't fit her negative impressions. He seemed quiet and serious. He'd had the courage, and the kindness, to stand up to Master Contar. He must have reverence for the Force, Eo thought, or he wouldn't have come to the Temple solely as a pilgrimage. If being in the AgriCorps meant learning from someone like Ava Yen, perhaps it could be OK she decided.

Eo felt a sudden jolt as the starship made the leap to hyperspace. They were on their way to the AgriCorps station on Deema. Ava Yen belonged to the station on Deema, but Master Contar had made it clear that Eo would not be staying there long. Sent off to some remote outpost, how would she ever find her way as a Jedi with teachers who weren't concerned with finding it themselves? Her worry settled into the pit of her stomach, and she sat hunched over it.

"We will be at Deema in half an hour."

Eo almost jumped. She'd thought she was alone in the hold, but there was Ava Yen, standing in the doorway between the hold and the cockpit. She scraped the tears from her eyes, but couldn't think of anything to say.

"You are sad because you wanted to be a Jedi knight?" Ava Yen asked gently.

Eo bit her lip. Perhaps Ava Yen would understand her feelings, but how could she explain without insulting his co-workers? So she shrugged. "But I'm not strong enough," she said sadly, and looked at her toes again.

"Maybe you will like agriculture," Ava Yen said hopefully. "The Force is strong in things that grow."

"Yes, I'll try," Eo said, trying to sound positive, but Ava Yen wasn't convinced.

"I was surprised at how Master Contar spoke to you," he said. "Most Jedi I know have more respect for the AgriCorps. Perhaps her manner added injury to her words, but you must fly over these things. I know some who have lost their way as Jedi, because of their resentment at not being chosen."

Eo looked up, very interested in what he had said, and Ava Yen was on the point of saying more, when an alarm went off in the cockpit. Ava Yen hurried to check, with Eo close behind him. As they entered the cockpit, the nav-droid pulled the little starship abruptly out of hyperspace, and they found themselves looking on a star-system of a hundred tiny planets, many blue-green, most red- or grey-brown. Between them hung a bright haze where interplanetary debris caught the light of the system's white star.

"I regret to say I have no idea where we are," Ava Yen said, and as he spoke a small asteroid struck the starship. The glancing blow sent the little starcraft spinning about its axis like a demented merry-go-round, flinging Eo against the wall of the cockpit. Ava Yen was able to hang on, but his composure was broken.

"Get back in the hold and strap yourself in," he barked. "I must regain control of the ship."

Eo scrambled to obey, clinging to the walls as she made her way along. Ava Yen tried everything his limited pilot training had taught him, to no avail. His eyes grew wide with fear as the little ship careened toward a small planet, narrowly missing pock-marked asteroids of varying sizes strewn thick around it.

The planet's surface was quiet and green, but the crash of the little passenger ship shattered the peace as it skidded to a violent halt in the woods. Then all was silent again.

Eo was able, with difficulty, to release her safety straps and get up. She put a hand to a gash on her head and stumbled toward the cockpit. Ava Yen lay face-down on the control panel.

"Ava Yen! Ava Yen!" she called in his ear. No response. She put a hand on his shoulder and but quickly withdrew. Gathering herself, she lifted his hand and found no life in it.


	4. Meeting Varda

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 4: Meeting Varda**

Eo stood by Ava Yen for some time, hoping he would move or even breathe, but he didn't. The air in the ship was quickly being filled with the smell of spilled fuel; she had to get out, but without power to the ship, the controls to open the hatch were jammed. If Eo had been capable of using the Force to open it, she might not have been sent into the AgriCorps, but under the circumstances she used her wits instead. There was an emergency toolbox in the cupboard at the back of the cockpit, and a laser-saw inside allowed her to cut the hatch open.

With a heavy heart and one last look back at Ava Yen, Eo emerged from the shipwreck and stepped down to the forest floor. The woods stood tall and green and silent around her. Through the trees, she saw a lake nearby and walked toward it, scrambling through the brush to the shore. The lake lay before her wide and still, shining in the evening light. Beyond it a thin column of smoke rose into the clear sky. Eo worked her way toward it, along the shore of the lake and then as well as she could through the forest, but dusk was quickly falling. After marking her direction with an arrow made of twigs, Eo curled up in the leaf-litter under the protection of a big tree. Night overtook her, and she slept uneasily, until a pale dawn crept beneath the trees.

Eo woke damp and stiff. All around her the weird song of tree-frogs rose and fell, a funeral chant for Ava Yen. But she heard another sound too, a rhythmic thud, and she got up and hurried toward it.

In a clearing beyond the trees there was a big garden, somewhat tangled, but rows of plants could be clearly seen, some roughly staked on branches. At the far side of the garden, an older woman in a green sari, perhaps about sixty years old, was chopping wood beside a rough round hut made of bent branches. She looked up and saw Eo come out of the trees toward her. They both stared at each other in surprise.

"Master Varda!" Eo cried.

"I don't know about Master, but I am Varda. I believe you are Eo Cloudlee."

"You remember me!"

"I remember all the children I taught in the Temple and hope better things for them than for myself. But how did you come here?"

Eo's face clouded over. "Ava Yen-he was the pilot-he and I were on our way to the AgriCorps station on Deema, but we came out of hyperspace wrong and crashed here."

Varda did not hide her surprise. "The Force must be strong with you. It's very rare to come here alive. But the pilot..."

Eo took a deep breath and let it out again. "He didn't make it," she said quietly.

"Then let us attend to his last rites before the wild things have their way with him."

Varda showed Eo a small path back to the lake, and a little boat with oars. Soon they had reached the shipwreck and dug a shallow grave nearby. Together, they laid Ava Yen in it.

"It's very difficult because the soil is shallow here," Varda said. "We ought to have dug more deeply, but the least we can do is to cover the grave with stones so the wild things don't bother him."

"But why don't we burn him?" Eo asked, puzzled. "Aren't Jedi usually burned when they die?"

"This man was not a Jedi. He was a Siluan. I knew him."

At this Eo was quite surprised. "What is a Siluan?" she asked.

Varda sighed. "I wish they would teach you these things in the temple! Tell me first, what is a Jedi?"

"A Jedi is one who is trained in the ways of the Force. We are to defend the peace and order of the galaxy."

Varda narrowed her eyes at this. "I suppose that answer will do for now," she said tersely. "If you say the Jedi defend the peace and order of the galaxy, then let us say that the Siluans cultivate a form of peace and order that is worth defending. They usually can't use the Force outwardly the way the Jedi do, but they use the Force inwardly, to 'acquire Light within them,' as they say."

Eo felt her heart leap unexpectedly at these words, but she was still confused. "But I thought only Jedi served with the AgriCorps..."

"Sometimes there are Siluans who volunteer to serve as well. The ones who can use the Force at all tend to be best at using it to understand plants and to help them grow, so they help the AgriCorps where they can." As she spoke, Varda led Eo to a streambed nearby to gather stones.

"It's very strange," Eo said as she gathered the smooth, flat rocks. "At first I was scared to touch a dead body, but I now feel peace, I feel alive!"

"Yes, it is often that way with the death of a Siluan."

"How so?"

"The Siluans believe that when a person dies, the energy they cultivated within them is released. If a person has cultivated Light within them, then their energy can do good even after they die. It's very unpredictable, but one way or another it brings life and peace, and it unmakes the works of the Dark Side."

Eo said nothing as she placed the stones over Ava Yen, but looked at the grave with wide eyes.

"So it is a great gift for you to have been present for the death of a Siluan," Varda continued. "But...we are alive, and those who live must eat, and if we wish to continue eating we must work." Varda turned away from the grave, motioning for Eo to follow her back to the boat. "I don't like to tell you this, but you are stuck here with me for some time. Your starship is badly damaged, and the one I came in is disabled. What is more, we are in a remote place, and the planet is surrounded by a debris field that is very dangerous to cross except at certain times."

"But then how did you get here?"

"That is a long story," Varda said. "Suffice to say I studied the debris field and found an opportune time. For you, we'll have to do the same, and find some way to repair either your ship or mine."

"It's OK if I'm stuck here," Eo said non-nonchalantly. "I don't want to go into the AgriCorps."

"That won't do!" Varda said sternly. "I came here to be a hermit, and you have a responsibility to go and continue your training."

Eo listened, but didn't answer at first. As they were laying stones on the grave, an idea had been hatching in Eo's mind, damp and fluffy at first like a newborn bird, but now as they walked back to the lakeshore, the idea sprouted feathers. "But couldn't you train me?" she asked. "Could you train me to be a Siluan?"

"The way of a Siluan is hard," Varda said flatly. "You don't know what you're asking for."

"I want to learn the ways of the Force. I want to learn more deeply, not like in the AgriCorps."

Varda's voice was hard as she spoke. "I've heard so many young people say that, but they don't know what they're asking for! They want honour, they want power, they want lightsabers! They don't understand that practicing the ways of the Force is very very hard!"

Eo looked a surprised and a little hurt at Varda's outburst, but answered simply, "They put me in the AgriCorps, so I'll never have a lightsaber anyways. I'm not good at using the Force the way the Jedi do, but I want to have light within me, like Ava Yen. I want to be like him when I die."

Varda stopped in her tracks and wheeled around to face Eo, who was following behind her. "A Siluan must have no self...no ego, no self-defence," she said. "They are almost never recognized or noticed for their work, and yet they must receive all that with humility. Do you really want that?"

"I...I don't know," Eo said. "I want to try."

Varda sighed and started walking again. "For better or worse, I am a Jedi, and a Jedi can't fully train a Siluan. But while you are here, you might as well learn what you can. But it will not be easy. You must listen carefully and do as I say. And you will have to work hard to help me with growing and gathering something to eat, as well as fixing the starship for you to leave when it's time."

"Yes, yes, yes!" Eo said excitedly. "I'll do everything!"

Varda sighed again, resignedly. "Evidently my will and the will of the Force are rather different things," she muttered to herself. Then she turned, and saw Eo lagging behind. "Well, come on then!" she said more loudly. "We have many things to do."

Back at the hut, Varda spooned lunch out of a big pot on the small stove. When Eo saw what was in her bowl, she didn't find it particularly appetizing: irregular chunks of something grey. But she said nothing, and on the first bite found it quite good and finished the whole bowl very quickly. Varda ate more slowly while Eo waited, and when she finally put down her chopsticks said, "Now that we have eaten, we will plant what we just ate."

From a basket in the kitchen, Varda pulled out a raw tuber and handed it to Eo. "Tell me what you see," she said.

Eo turned the fleshy tuber over in her hands and looked at it with awe. "It looks like a rock, but it feels alive," she said. "It's all knobby and purple...but the ones we ate were grey?"

"Yes, the purple pigment is destroyed with the heat of cooking. But go on."

"There's little green nibs," Eo said, touching the five small spikes sticking out from the sides of the tuber.

"Those are called eyes," Varda said, "and rightly so: even in the soil, they can sense the light, and when they see it, they will grow toward it and become a new plant."

"I've never planted anything before," Eo said with awe.

"That," said Varda, "is one of many failings in Jedi education which you will have to overcome. But let us begin."

Varda led Eo to the garden. It had seemed so tangled when Eo first saw it earlier in the day, but now that she'd had something to eat and wasn't so distraught, she could discern blocks of garden beds, each three meters by three meters, planted with a dizzying array of crops she didn't know: some with wide flat leaves and scrambling vines, some with tall straight stalks. Beside some frilly plant with pink flowers, Varda pointed out a patch of bare soil and showed Eo how to make a trench in the ground. They laid the tubers in length-wise, with the pointed ends all facing the same direction, and covered them with soil.

Eo might well have sat there all day waiting for the new shoots to come up, but Varda had other ideas. For the rest of the day she pushed Eo hard at garden work, assigning her to cut down tall weeds and haul heavy buckets of fertile pond muck. They barely spoke as they worked, but as the sun set, Varda said, "That is all for today. What do you think of this garden work?"

Eo's eyes were full of thought, and she was slow to answer. She felt tired, but it was the best kind of tired she had ever felt. And the feel of the Force in the myriad plants of the garden sent a shiver up her spine. "I had no idea there was so much life in the plants and the soil," she said at last. "I feel the Force here. Working in the garden every day would be very beautiful, I think."

"Perhaps, then, you could be a Siluan. One of the Siluan masters said, _Be the slave of your garden, and your garden will teach you everything_."

Eo thanked Varda, and dusk fell gently around them. Little did Eo guess where her new path would take her, or just how much the galaxy was about to change.


	5. Destruction

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 5: Destruction**

Garth Jetty was, admittedly, a cargo pilot; but he was a cargo pilot with style, and could make his little freighter swoop and zip like a starfighter. On that particular day, his cargo was just one passenger: an elderly Yemerian, and a Jedi Master at that. Lu Mang was his name, but Garth knew him as Master Lu. Sitting there wrapped in a brown Jedi cloak with his tan-gray tail curled around his feet, the little lizard-like Jedi cut a rather quizzical figure.

The two had long been friends, and today they were on their way to the AgriCorps station on Deema, where agricultural Jedi from across the galaxy were gathering for the biannual AgriCorps Symposium. Garth smiled to himself as he came in for a landing, seeing the station sitting there amid the patchwork of rice paddies and nut groves that made up Deema's subtropical farming landscape. He'd met Master Lu back when that station was an old Jedi's dream with no budget to fund it, but look at it now! A block-like library, a tall communications tower, a power reactor, living quarters and a beautiful domed temple formed a central core of buildings, around which experimental fields spread out in concentric rings.

Having safely landed near the outermost of the concentric fields, Garth and Master Lu were greeted by Lemma Bridger, the site manager.

"Garth, good to see you again!" she said, and gave him a quick hug before she saw the aged Jedi get out of the freighter behind him. "Master Lu! You're here!" she exclaimed before remembering to bow politely.

Master Lu smiled gently and bowed. "It's good to be back, good to be back," he said in his creaky voice.

He was in no hurry, but Garth was. "Lemma, good to see you, but I gotta take off again," he said. "Master Lu, catch you round, eh?"

Master Lu waved goodbye and walked with the Lemma along a wide path between fields thick with crops. Several young Jedi worked among them: weeding, harvesting, pruning, making observations.

Master Lu breathed deeply. "The Force is strong here!" he said, stretching his arms up. "It's good to be back!"

"I can't believe they let you off duty from the war!" Lemma said happily. "I thought you'd never make it for the Symposium."

Master Lu laughed grimly. "Oh, the war. I would like to think the Jedi Council is beginning to understand that my being a Jedi Master doesn't automatically make me fit for battle. The more we fight, the more I hate this war, the more all the Jedi do."

Lemma scowled. "But you're different," she said. "You belong here with the AgriCorps. You chose to serve with us. They shouldn't be making you fight."

Master Lu sighed. "I would rather be here, it's true, but please let us be strong for each other, Lemma," he said gently. "If we give way to our anger, what will become of us Jedi? I agreed to the summons, so I am as much to blame as the Council. But..." he said, and straighted up as if to shake off the unpleasant topic. "But I do miss training the young ones here. How is the new batch coming along?"

Lemma rolled her eyes and shook her head. "I don't know how you did it," she said, glancing at a pair of young Jedi pruning berry vines as she and Master Lu walked past them. "The ones who got passed up 'cause they didn't have the skill to be full-on knights, they're OK once I manage to show them that what we're doing here actually matters. But the ones who got sent here because no one at the Temple wanted to deal with their attitude problems, I swear forty years of Jedi training isn't enough to give me patience for them. It's been pretty rough at times."

Master Lu looked suddenly tired. If he was looking for a happier topic, this wasn't it. Here, as on the battlefront, the Jedi were hard pressed. "Well," he said, shaking off his discouraging thoughts, "while I'm here I'll do what I can to help you. Your work is more important than you may realize, Lemma. Too many of them loose their way for thinking that being in the AgriCorps makes them less a Jedi than the Knights are. We must do all we can to teach them otherwise."

There was the sound of aircraft. Master Lu, a fresh from the battlefront, ducked and looked for cover.

Lemma laughed at him. "Don't worry, it's just the crop sprayer..."

Her voice was cut off by the sudden sound of shooting. She and Master Lu both fell to the ground, caught in the spray of laser-bullets as three Republic Y-wings passed low overhead, broadcasting their ammunition.

Back at his little freighter, Garth looked up when he heard the sound, stopped checking the engine and slammed himself back into the cockpit. He took off after the Y-wings, gaining on them, shooting down the closest one but missing the second and third. He kept gaining on them as they approached the AgriCorps station's central cluster of buildings. Garth watched in disbelief as the remaining two Y-wings fired proton torpedos at the power reactor. There was a massive blast as the reactor blew up, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he pulled away barely in time.

Looking back, Garth realized that for the clones behind the controls of those Y-wings, blowing up the reactor was a suicide mission: neither emerged from the mushroom-cloud of destruction that was quickly enveloping Deema's quiet landscape. Garth found he couldn't get through to the Jedi Temple on the comm link, so he made a snap decision: he would just head straight back to Coruscant and report the destruction in person.

"Damn clones!" he yelled into his forward viewport as he pulled the lever to make the jump back into hyperspace. With the blue swirls of hyperspace writhing before him, Garth slumped back in his pilot seat, feeling kicked in the gut. Master Lu had been a friend for more than a decade. Garth had seen the blood, sweat and tears that he put into building that AgriCorps station from scratch, and had shared in the effort himself. Now a thousand-odd AgriCorps members were dead and the station in smithereens, all because of a few rogue clones. And all because some damn Jedi Knight wasn't keeping an eye on them, Garth thought.

These thoughts did not prepare Garth for what he found on Coruscant. Flying low over the city, he arrived to find the Temple surrounded by a legion of clone troopers, and every Holonet news channel reporting the clones' "bravery" in putting down a "treasonous uprising" by the Jedi Knights. He circled the temple in his freighter, numb with disbelief, until he noticed one of the clone troopers scanning his ship with a hand-held probe, then recording something on a datapad. Garth quickly got his freighter out of sight.

Garth raced to visit every Jedi outpost he knew of, but it was always the same: facilities bombed or heavily guarded, and not one Jedi to be found alive. Many of the fallen were clients and friends of his, but he hardened his grief into pure adrenaline and kept on flying. There were still a few Jedi he knew of who might be left, and he knew where to find at least one of them. He sped toward the planet Nechako, and the Moosachu Plains, where he had dropped off his friend Devin Strong and Devin's wife Shie just days before.


	6. Hiding Devin Strong, Part I

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 6: Hiding Devin Strong, part I**

Coming out of hyperspace at the planet Nechako, Garth felt kind of sick. Telling his friend Devin about the attack on Deema's AgriCorps station was going to be like killing a puppy, he thought. For Devin, the AgriCorps was everything: work, family, something to believe in. He had been Master Lu's apprentice all through those challenging days when Master Lu and Devin were the only two AgriCorps Jedi serving on Deema. At first Devin hadn't been happy with being assigned to the AgriCorps, but as he got to know the land and got to know Master Lu, he discovered his own gift for using the Force to connect with plants and animals. Agriculture, for Devin, came to mean a way to fulfil his calling as a Jedi, and the AgriCorps became everything to him.

The AgriCorps was everything, that is, until Devin met a young woman named Shie. But in spite of Garth's merciless chiding, Devin maintained a purely platonic relationship with her until after he'd made the difficult decision to leave the Jedi Order. His integrity, however, paid off. The AgriCorps station he'd helped to build on Deema allowed him to continue working with them, albeit as a non-Jedi technical support person, even after his marriage.

And that marriage, Garth now thought grimly, had paid off too: if Devin hadn't left the Jedi Order to get married, he wouldn't have reconnected with his parents, and if he hadn't reconnected with his parents, he wouldn't have made an emergency trip to Nechako when he heard his mom had had a stroke, and if he hadn't gone to Nechako, he would probably have been there at the AgriCorps Symposium when those damn clones blew up the reactor...

Now coming in close to the planet Nechako, Garth swooped his little freighter in over the endless grassland of the Moosachu Plains, where Devin's parents had recently settled in one of the few scattered farmsteads. Garth breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Devin standing there on the wind-swept prairie, not far from the igloo-like farmhouse, but it was not a happy scene.

Devin and Shie stood with a small group of people not far from the farmhouse. Devin's dad Vince Baxter was there, along with a few neighbours, and a big, broad-shouldered man in a green tunic, seemingly a priest of some sort. Nearby, a hole gaped in the ground, and a mound of soil stood beside it. As Garth walked up to join the crowd, he caught Devin's eye, and they exchanged nods.

Soon two men came carrying a body on a simple bier, an old woman draped in cloth. Devin held himself with great composure, but Vince just let the tears stream down his face as he and Devin and Shie helped lower her into the ground.

The priest-figure raised his hand, calling everyone to attention, and sprinkled some herbs into the grave. "Though her life be ended, yet shall the Light be unbroken. May her spirit be one with the Force and her body one with the land that bore her," he chanted, and then threw three shovelfuls of soil into the grave. Handing the shovel to Vince, he motioned for him to do the same. They all take turns, Devin and his wife Shie, and then the others. Everyone was very respectful, though most were stiff and awkward as they approached the grave, showing the uncertainty of never having done something like this before. Garth chose not to participate.

As soon as he could, Devin ran over and grabbed Garth in a bear-hug.

"Thanks for coming," Devin said. "I didn't think you'd be able to make it."

"I wish I could say I just came for this, but actually I've got bad news."

"Well, it will have to be pretty bad to register right now."

"Look, you've got guests. When they're gone, let's talk."

With the burial complete, the priest-figure came to Devin and laid a big hand on his shoulder. "Your mom was a good woman, Devin," he said, and gave Devin a sad smile.

"Thanks, Ava Kirrin. Thanks for coming on such short notice."

"I was really impressed with your Dad for allowing a ceremony like this," Ava Kirrin said. "I know it's not his thing."

"Yeah, he knows it's what mom wanted."

Ava Kirrin paused and looked at Devin carefully. "Take care of your Dad, Devin" he said. "And take care of yourself. If you need me, you know where to find me."

Devin smiled sadly. "Thanks. Take care of yourself too, eh?"

With a nod to Devin, Ava Kirrin headed back to his ship. Garth watched him walk away, then turned to Devin.

"What's with the dude and the primitive ritual?"

"He's a Siluan..." Devin saw Garth raise an eyebrow. "They're another sect, kind of like the AgriCorps Jedi but different. Mom was into their teachings."

"Intense," Garth said, and paused. "So Devin, you heard any news from the AgriCorps symposium?"

Devin shook his head. "I really wanted to be there, but then this happened..."

"So you don't know what's happened?"

Devin was a bit taken aback. "Uh, no?"

Everyone was gone by then, but Garth still lowered his voice. "Listen buddy, it's bad. You're going to hear that there was a reactor malfunction there, but that's bullshit. I was there dropping Master Lu off for the Symposium the other day and out of nowhere the Republics's own starfighters attacked the place and blew up the reactor."

"What?!" Devin looked as if Garth had hit him in the face.

"It gets worse," Garth said. "So I tried to fight back but no one else was armed. It was all I could do to pull out when the reactor blew. I went back by the temple to tell them what happened...and not a soul alive in the place. Not a soul. I stopped in at a dozen other AgriCorps and MedCorp stations, and same story."

"So then Master Lu is dead too..."

Garth nodded. "I'm sorry to break it to you at a time like this. But I wanted you to know, and I wanted to tell you to hide."

"I don't need to hide! We need to do something about this!"

Garth wanted to punch Devin. This was not the time for selfless heroics. "No," Garth said forcefully, "you need to hide. The Chancellor is calling himself Emperor now and he's accusing the Jedi Order of treason."

"I'm not a Jedi anymore."

"That won't save you. You know Astvan Virk and those guys? They're same as you, but the same day all this went down I found them all shot dead in their workshop."

Devin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "But I have Shie to think about, and a kid on the way..."

"That's why you need to hide, dammit."

"Where?"

"Here would do well enough. No one knows you here, right?"

Devin shook his head. "But I can't ask Shie to move from Deema to somewhere like this..."

"Look, I don't care where you go, just keep your head down and stay safe. Someday we're going to need guys like you still alive."

"But then what are you going to do?"

"I go and keep trying to find out if anyone else is left, and warn them. After that, I'll figure it out."

Devin and Garth stood there looking at each other for a moment. In the midst of his shock and grief, it was dawning on Devin that with everyone else gone, Garth had come all the way to Nechako for the sole purpose of saving Devin's life. Devin started to tear up.

Garth looked away and kicked at a rock on the ground. He didn't like soft emotions. "Well, anyways, I got some stuff for you," he said, and beckoned Devin over to his freighter. "Aggie, come on out!" he called to someone inside. Down the ramp came a humanoid figure, metallic and tractor orange.

"A protocol droid?" Devin said. "What am I supposed to do with a protocol droid?"

"Not just any protocol droid. Aggie, this is Devin. Devin, Aggie."

"Hi," Devin said to the droid.

"Hello!" the droid said, rather enthusiastically. "I am AG360, a complete integrated agriculture information assistant for agronomists and farm managers. Agricultural systems are complex, which is why I have been programmed to..."

Garth cut her off. "Look, stuff it Aggie, you can finish introducing yourself later. Devin, she's a bit long-winded but she's one of a kind. This is what Virk's team was working on...an advanced agricultural protocol droid. Whoever shot him destroyed a bunch of his droids too, but I found her in the scrap pile out back. I thought you could at least give her a home."

Devin rolled his eyes. He didn't like droids. "For Virk's sake and Virk's sake only, yes," he said.

"And then there's this..." Garth unrolled an oblong object wrapped in a bandana.

Devin shook his head. "I'm not supposed to have that."

"Look," Garth said, in no mood to do things by the book, "I found it on the passenger seat after I dropped Master Lu off. I thought it belonged more with you than it does with me."

Devin took it solemnly and wrapped it back up in the bandana. He didn't know what to say. To take possession of Master Lu's light-sabre was no small thing.

"Well buddy, I got to go," Garth said. "Keep your head down and don't do anything stupid, K?"

Garth waved a hand, strode into his ship and climbed back into the cockpit. Devin stood there on the dry prairie grassland of Nechako, watching Garth fly away, and trying not to breath the dust of his takeoff.


	7. Hiding Devin Strong, Part II

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 7: Hiding Devin Strong, part II**

Ever since they got the news that his mother had passed away, Shie kept a close eye on her husband Devin. Devin knew his parents only briefly: as an infant before he was taken to the Jedi temple, and as an adult after he left the Jedi Order to marry Shie. Though his adult acquaintance with his parents was brief, Devin formed a deep, intuitive bond with his mother. Her death was an unexpected blow, but the quiet groundedness he had cultivated as a Jedi served him well, and he bore her passing with strength in the face of his sadness. It was only after the funeral that Shie noticed something change in the way Devin carried himself. He looked through things, not at them. He seemed broken, shattered even.

Nevertheless, she had no chance to talk with him about it. Devin's father Vince was a workaholic in the truest sense of the word, and where some men might have drowned their sorrow at the bar, he buried himself in work, and dragged Devin and Shie into helping him haul up the old well pump that served the farm house and re-service it down to the last O-ring. By the time they'd reinstalled the pump and reconnected the control box, it was dark and well past dinner time. Vince gulped a can of Galactic Star Meal Replacement and went to bed, leaving Devin and Shie to themselves.

It was the first chance they'd had to be alone together all day, and so Shie was surprised when the first thing Devin did was to turn on the radio.

 _...price increase will continue to be a dominant factor affect farm revenues in cycles to come_ , the radio said. Shie looked at Devin quizzically, and he motioned for her to wait.

 _This is Quid Haney. Join me again next time for Mind Your Farm Business on Galactic Ag Radio!_ There was a short music interlude, and the radio voice changed to another announcer. _Now for your hourly news briefing from the Galactic Rural News Service, now brought to you by the Imperial Ministry of Communication. Today's top story: The war is over! Supreme Chancellor Palpatine is now hailed as Galactic Emperor after putting down a treacherous uprising by the Jedi Knights and negotiating a favourable end to the Clone Wars. We'll have more of this important story on News In Depth at 1300h. In other news, a reactor malfunction at the AgriCorps station on Deema has killed the majority of agricultural extension agents gathered for a symposium there. Fertilizer prices are up as investors speculate..._

Devin reached over and flicked the radio off again. Shie sat stunned for a moment.

"But how could that even be true?" she said.

"It isn't. Garth was there, on Deema. The reactor didn't malfunction, the Republic's own troops blew it up. And in the temple, they didn't just put down an uprising. They killed every person there down to the last child."

"So then you can't go back to work at the AgriCorps station."

"There is no AgriCorps. They're all dead, Shie, they're all dead, even guys like me who weren't part of the Jedi Order anymore. Everyone. Virk, Lemma, Master Lu, they're all..." Devin broke down.

As she held her husband in her arms, Shie felt it would nearly break her to see the way he cried. But when she had finally led him to bed and gotten him to sleep, she too chugged a can of Galactic Star Meal Replacement, and started to work out a plan.

The next morning, as soon as Devin was finished eating a solid breakfast, she began, "Devin, what do you think of coming to live here?"

"Here, like here in Moosachu?"

"Here on the farm with your dad."

"But Shie...the Moosachu Plains are nothing like Deema. It gets cold here. We've never had to face prairie winters before. And this has got to be the most backwater part of a backwater planet."

"Yes, I know, but you need to hide. I need you to hide," she said, and hugging her rounded belly. "And this kid needs you to hide."

"Yes, but here?"

"Vince is the only grandparent our kid's going to have."

"But what about your work?"

"I'm sure Vince would be happy to have both of us helping on the farm, and I want to be home for the first couple years anyways. Besides, I already called Nechako AgMech...they always have part-time work for a farm mechanic. I'm not so keen on working at Deema Farmserve that I have to go back there."

Devin leaned back in his chair and looked out the window at the endless fields. Maybe Shie was right and Garth was right and staying in Moosachu was a good idea, but he still felt to grief-weary to settle on where to go now that they couldn't go back to Deema. And there were other problems. "I mean, we could stay here," he said slowly, "but even here at some point I'll have to use my ID card for something, and then some government computer goes ' _ding ding! Devin Strong here!_ ' and they've found me."

"Devin Strong doesn't exist anymore," Shie said, with a wave of her hand. "Devin Strong was at the AgriCorps symposium with all the other support staff when the reactor blew up. Devin Baxter, on the other hand, Devin Baxter is the prodigal son who just came back to help his poor old dad on the farm."

"Everyone and their droid is called Devin Baxter!"

"Exactly!" Shie said. "We'll be just another Devin and Shie Baxter, just another Jane and John Doe."

"And what slime bag on the black market are we going to have to deal with to get fake ID?"

Shie smiled. At least she had Devin worked up now. "I was about to get to that. If we claim to have lost our ID, Vince can vouch for us to get replacements, and sharing his surname will make it seem all the more legit. All we have to do is go down to the Co-op to fill out the forms. I already called the planetary admin office to check about that."

Devin looked down into his empty mug. He was about to speak when his father Vince trudged in without a greeting and poured himself a cup of coffee without sitting down.

"So I suppose you'll be taking off again this morning, or shall I say this afternoon?" Vince looked pointedly at his watch, and then at Devin.

"Well, we were just talking about that," Devin said. Perhaps it was the need to give a no-nonsense answer to his non-nonsense father, but whatever the reason, as Devin spoke he realized that he'd made up his mind. "We were thinking with the kid on the way it might make sense for us to come live here in Moosachu, and with mom gone it might make sense for me to help out on the farm. What do you think?"

"I'd say you were a damn idiot to leave behind a decent job on Deema to come to a backwater place like here," his father said.

Devin sighed. "If you haven't already heard on the radio, I don't really have a job to go back to, between the reactor blowing up at AgriCorps and what's happened with the Jedi Order in general."

"Oh, that's right. Damn Jedi! So they finally stuck their necks out too far. I told your mother not to let that 'Master Lu' take you to the temple. Pah!"

Shie cast a worried glance at Devin, unsure how he would take this, but with perfect Jedi dispassion he simply said, "It would seem advisable for me to leave all things Jedi behind and start over here. If you'll vouch for me, I'd like to get a new ID card with your surname instead of mom's and just focus on helping you here at the farm."

"So you're going to take your wife away from a decent job? Don't forget you've got a kid on the way!"

"Vince, it's OK," Shie said. "Really. I want to stay home for the first few years at least, and I was just a cog in the machine at Deema Farmserve anyways." Shie spoke with more confidence that she felt; leaving Deema meant leaving behind everything she'd ever known, but Vince was satisfied with her show of confidence.

"Well, if you're both stuck on it, you can put up another house here on the south ridge," Vince said, and drained his mug. "There's plenty of work to be done here by anyone who has a mind to do it, and I sure don't have a mind to. The farm was your mom's idea, not mine. If you want to run it it's all yours."

Devin was surprised at this. His dad wasn't normally supportive of his ideas. "Thanks, Dad," was all he managed to say.

"Well, if you aren't leaving I won't say goodbye. There's a to-do list on the computer in the barn, de-worming the herd and stuff like that. I've got a job to do over at the Larkin's place." With that Vince plunked his empty mug down on the table and turned to go. "If you want to make dinner tonight that's fine by me!" he called from the door, and was gone again.

Devin looked out the window again at the unpeopled grassland. The Moosachu Plains were so vast, so lonely. "Shie, how in the galaxy are we going to make a life here?" he asked, turning to face his wife again. What he didn't ask aloud was _Who am I now without the AgriCorps? Am I the only one left?_

Shie reached out and put her hands over his, and their eyes met. "We can do this," she said. "We'll run the farm, we'll raise our kids, and everything will be OK."

 _I am so lucky have this woman,_ Devin thought. _I only hope she's right._


	8. Captured

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 8: Captured**

From the Moosachu Plains of Nechako, Garth pulled off into hyperspace, but when he came out at his next destination, his little freighter simply refused to respond any further. All controls were overridden. He couldn't properly see the ship that had him caught in it's tractor beam; it was on his dorsal side and already too close. Garth muttered every profanity he knew, and then remembered the clone trooper who noted down his presence at the Temple on Coruscant. Taking his blaster, he destroyed the computer containing the ship's log.

Before long, Garth could hear the _whzzz_ of being sucked into the larger ship, the _clang_ of being locked in place and the _bang_ of the larger starship's portal closing. Then there was the sound of many footsteps outside.

"Open up in there!" someone called.

"Not on your life!" he shouted back.

"Set for stun," the voice said to another, and the passenger door of his beautiful little freighter disintegrated in a thousand sparks. The white head of a clone trooper appeared at the opening.

Garth opened fire. The first, the second, the third clone trooper fell, and then his blaster ran out of power and he could shoot no more. A fourth clone trooper pushed through the door, and Garth felt a sickening pulse of energy ride through his body: he'd been stunned.

Next thing Garth knew, he was in handcuffs, being wrestled by two clone troopers into a little room off a metallic hallway. Inside, a tall woman sat at a desk. Wide, dark eyes, high cheekbones and dark, wavy hair pulled back from her olive face gave her a rather dramatic look. She was in fact quite good-looking, but Garth simply glared at her as he was thrust into her office.

She looked up from her work with a sarcastic smile. "Why, Garth Jetty!" she said with mock pleasantry, "I was hoping to see you."

Garth kept on glaring at her. "And who are you?"

"Ry Kyver, director of IMAg."

"I what?"

"IMAg. Imperial Ministry of Agriculture."

Garth's eyes flew wide open in a moment of recognition. "Wait, I remember you. You're a Jedi. You were with the AgriCorps. Why weren't _you_ there when the reactor blew?"

Ry shrugged. "I guess I'm a lucky girl," she said, "lucky to have tracked you down, anyways. IMAg now has jurisdiction over what remains of the AgriCorps. We asked for all staff to report in. Why didn't you respond to our messages?"

"Well, I'm actually a contractor..." Garth drawled sardonically.

"A contractor whose clientele is composed almost entirely of AgriCorps Jedi and support staff."

"So?"

"You were specifically summoned by an Imperial body and did not respond."

"Yeah, well, it's kind of fishy when the Republic's own clones attack unarmed Jedi agronomists and then public radio reports it as a reactor malfunction."

"Oh, so you were there. I thought so." Ry gave Garth a pointed look, and allowed an uncomfortable pause before she continued. "So I suppose there's nothing you'd like to tell me about the hundred or so other AgriCorps members currently unaccounted for?"

"You're damn right there's nothing I want to tell you."

"I know you know where we might find some of the remaining AgriCorps personnel. Your friend Devin Strong, for instance?"

"He was at the Symposium."

"I see," Ry said. "You have my condolences. And where were you headed when we caught you?"

"Ask my computer."

"You destroyed that."

"Exactly."

Ry Kyver pursed her lips and folded her hands on her desk. "In that case," she said, "we have a rather excellent opportunity ahead of us. You see, I've been developing some advanced tranquilizers to enhance livestock handling, but I think they may have an application with human detainees as well. I'm sure they will enhance your questioning experience rather greatly."

"Over my dead body."

"I have not ruled out that option," Ry said, and turned to the clone troopers. "Escort this prisoner to Area 2 and begin treatment immediately." To Garth she said sarcastically, "I'd love to join you, but I have a meeting to attend."

As Garth was shoved back out into the hall, he tried one last trick: flicking his leg out to the side, he hooked one the clone troopers just behind the knee, and they both went down. The other clone trooper simply stunned Garth again, and he blacked out.


	9. The Imperial Minister of Agriculture

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 9:** **The Imperial Minister of Agriculture**

It was not without reason that Emperor Palpatine hand-picked Ry Kyver to be his Imperial Minister of Agriculture. The importance of securing Imperial control over galactic production of food, the one thing no sentient being can do without, was not lost on the new Emperor. Nor was it lost on him that Ry Kyver had skills none of his other minions could offer.

Thought raised as a Jedi, long years of resentment at being assigned to the AgriCorps had cultivated in Ry Kyver a rather nuanced command of the Dark Side of the Force. This, combined with her natural scientific aptitude, allowed her to design new pesticides and genetically manipulate crops simply using the Force, with little need for costly experimentation. What is more, during her days in the hated AgriCorps, she had dreamed up dark schemes and distilled them down to a succinct and rather elegant plan, which now offered the Emperor a way to use agriculture to foster just the sort of galactic domination he dreamed of.

For her part, Ry Kyver was suitably flattered with her new post in the Imperial government. It certainly did not represent the height of her ambitions, but it was a foot in the door to greater power, and she very much looked forward to presenting her brainchild, the Imperial Agriculture Program, at the first meeting of the Galactic Imperialization Committee. Admiral Tarkin, however, was not pleased to see her there.

"Lord Vader, I fail to understand what use there can be in allowing the Ministry of _Agriculture_ , of all things, a place at this table!" Tarkin fumed when Ry Kyver got up to make her presentation.

"I wish to remind you," Vader said over his rasping breath, "that the Emperor is aware of the proposal set forth by the Minister of Agriculture, and desires that it be approved." Darth Vader's words might have silenced others but Tarkin was undaunted.

"The Emperor must understand that the weapon we are constructing will give the Empire ultimate power, and render these agricultural strategies unnecessary."

This, Ry decided, was an excellent opening for her presentation. "Admiral Tarkin," she said sweetly, "even if, and that is a big if, you are able to construct that monstrosity, it will be useful as a threat only against those planets we can afford to lose. And there are some planets we cannot currently afford to lose. Consider for example the planet Ukio."

With a dramatic flourish Ry flicked on the hologram projector and a vivid image of the galaxy's premier agricultural world hung over the table. "Ukio, the breadbasket of the Core Worlds," she continued, "produces 63% of the food consumed in the Galactic Core. The other 37% of the Core Worlds' food supply is produced primarily by four other planets, which also produce the bulk of foodstuffs imported by planets of the Inner Rim. Key planets of the Outer Rim likewise rely on imports from specific hubs of agricultural production. As none of these planets can be destroyed without disrupting supply chains to our own operations, I believe even Admiral Tarkin will concede the impracticality of blasting any of our agricultural worlds into oblivion, even if they were to rebel." Ry Kyver paused to enjoy seeing Admiral Tarkin glower at her with nothing to say. Having relished the moment, she continued.

"The question is, how then can we maintain control over these agricultural worlds? How indeed can we maintain Imperial control over the galactic food supply? Some have suggested a strong military presence on the agricultural worlds as a means to maintain control and thwart rebellion, but such occupation is expensive, and might itself inspire rebellion, which is also expensive. I believe the best answer is quite simple: we control the agricultural planets by controlling the inputs commercial farmers rely on for success."

With the press of another button, the hologram display changed to highlight three far-flung planets, one larger and two smaller. "Let us now consider the planets Phosphor, Yemer, and Krajik" Ry said. "They account for nearly 100% of the galaxy's supply of phosphate and potash fertilizers, without which commercial agriculture as we know it is impossible. The inhabitants of these planets can be easily dominated, and by bringing them under tight Imperial control, we will gain a monopoly over fertilizer supply. In the short term, farmers will find that it is in their best economic interest to cooperate with the Empire. In the long run, gaining a monopoly over all agricultural inputs will mean that we hold all the cards. We can play those cards to reconstruct a food system based on droid and clone farmers, without the need to risk the caprice of free-willed sentient beings running our galactic food supply."

Ry Kyver paused again to survey her audience. They appeared suitable impressed, so she continued. "In closing I would like to highlight one more point: there is now no Jedi AgriCorps. For millenia, farmers have relied on the AgriCorps to use the Force to solve pest and disease problems for them. With the AgriCorps gone, we can fill that gap to our advantage. I have personally developed a new suite of herbicides and pesticides that will earn farmers' trust with short-term yield increases, but ultimately change the ecology of farmland to the point that agriculture is only possible with a supply of chemicals and genetically modified seeds that our Imperial crown corporations alone will provide, again ensuring that farmers' support for the Empire and their success in commercial farming go hand in hand."

As Ry turned off the projector and brought her presentation to a close, Darth Vader raised his hand slightly. "At this time I do not recommend objections to the proposal, which has the Emperor's approval," he said, "but questions may be asked, if you wish."

No one chose to speak, and the meeting was adjourned. After all the work she'd put into crafting the Imperial Agriculture Plan, Ry was miffed that no one wanted to ask for further details. The Minister of Finance, however, caught up with her in the hallway afterwards. "I commend your proposal in principle," he said, "but I do have one question. Line 15 of the budget specifies the permanent allocation of a detachment of stormtroopers to the Ministry of Agriculture. What is the purpose? It represents a considerable expense."

"Oh, yes, the stormtroopers," Ry said. "Of course the Imperialization of the galactic food system will include military takeover where deemed necessary. To begin with, there is the takeover of the planet Phosphor," Ry said, and was about to continue when he cut in.

"How in the galaxy do you intend to take over the entire industrial complex of Phosphor with only one detachment of stormtroopers?"

The Minister of Finance was an old acquaintance, and Ry felt free to be a little coy with him, so she smirked, and said, "Just watch me!"


	10. The Takeover of Phosphor

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 10:** **The Takeover of Phosphor**

Ry Kyver's intention to forcibly capture the planet Phosphor with only a handful of stormtroopers might not seem at all extreme from the planet's ground level. After all, there was nothing there, really, just the central processing facility, which was a maze of massive crushing machines, extended conveyor belts, and huge silos where raw calcium phosphate rock was converted to the fertilizer di-ammonium phosphate. The whole place was staffed by a few hundred droids and a handful of biological workers, mostly Rodians, most of whom were unarmed.

The kicker was the sky-shield. It combined a military grade defensive shield with a laser-activated automatic firing system that was impenetrable without permission and unassailable except by great military might. The Empire, of course, had the resources to simply blast a way in, but Ry Kyver wouldn't have that. The Imperial Agriculture Program was her one chance to prove herself in the new Empire, and she was not going to have the credit for the takeover of a key resource planet go to one of Admiral Tarkin's military minions. And so to Phosphor's sky-shield Ry Kyver came, not with Star Destroyers or stormtroopers, but in a simple passenger starship marked GWSC: Galactic Workers Safety Commission. She too looked the part: uniform, clipboard, safety-conscious scowl.

"State your purpose," a harsh droid voice said over the comm-link as she approached the shield.

"I'm Glena Padwi, with the Galactic Workers Safety Commission. This is an inspection."

"We aren't due for an inspection," a human-sounding voice said, taking over from the droid.

"The legislation governing the GWSC states that workplaces employing biological workers must accept unscheduled inspections if they wish to retain their trade license."

"We're busy."

"I can tell the Imperial Trade Minister that you refused a visit; he might just give you a fine."

The voice growled, "Well, come in then, dammit."

Ry made a smooth landing just outside the boxy administrative office, donned her oxygen mask for the planet's thin atmosphere, and stepped outside. She felt quite pleased with herself. First step accomplished in a plan that was simple, economical, and for her at least, highly entertaining.

"Nothing to worry about, just a routine check," Ry said when the foreman let her into the main office. "Let's start with the Worksite Incident Log."

As the foreman turned to pull up the log on the computer, Ry whipped out her blaster. Before he could cry out, the foreman lay on the ground, stunned.

Ry jerked his arm up and pressed his hand to the biometric scanner on the main security computer. Once in the system, she found she still needed a password. She slapped the foreman half-awake. "You will give me the password to the main computer," she said in her most commanding mind-control voice.

"1395180031," he said, and she stunned him again.

That number was good for access to everything she wanted. She pulled out her communicator. "Xeres, it's all yours," she said with a smile. "Bring them in."

The shield was down, the cannons offline, and without trouble Ry's second-in-command, Nathan Xeres, brought in the stormtroopers. Ry watched from the office window as the stormtroopers picked off the biological workers and disabled the droids. It all took about five minutes.

The foreman came to. "Thanks for your help," Ry said, and shot him again, not using stun this time.


	11. Propaganda

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 11:** **Propaganda**

It was not without reason that Emperor Palpatine congratulated himself on choosing Ry Kyver to be his Imperial Minister of Agriculture. To her tactical wit, scientific insight and Dark Side prowess, she added one more thing he valued highly: a flair for propaganda.

It was clear to Ry Kyver that the success of her brainchild, and therefore her own hope of promotion within the Empire, required farmers to believe two things: first, that the new Imperial Agriculture Program was in their best interest, and second, that the loss of their valued Jedi AgriCorps assistants was not the Empire's fault. To that end, Ry Kyver took part in the following interview, which aired on rural public Holonet and radio galaxywide.

Radio announcer: You are listening to Farming Today on Galactic Ag Radio, now brought to you by the Imperial Ministry of Agriculture! This is your host, Garry Jagaimo! Today I have with me in studio two distinguished guests: the Honourable Ry Kyver, Imperial Minister of Agriculture, and Mr. Kori Waxbroom, president of the Galactic Farmers Union. Welcome to you both!

Kori: Pleasure to be here!

Ry: Thanks for having us.

Radio announcer: I'm sure the big thing on everyone's mind is the current phosphate fertilizer supply crisis, or "peak phosphate," as it's being called, so let's start there. Minister Ms. Kyver, could you fill our listeners in on the current situation?

Ry: I estimate that we have about a hundred years of phosphate reserves left at our current rate of use, but we need to start now on finding a strategy for conservation.

Radio Announcer: Has there been no progress on finding new phosphate reserves?

Ry: Sadly, no. Unlike the Republic, the Empire will be investing in a search, but what I've seen so far is not particularly hopeful. What we need, rather, is a strategy for more conscientious resource use.

Radio Announcer: What do you think that might look like?

Ry: Basically, farmers who are showing themselves to be best able to maximize production per unit input of fertilizer will be given first priority to purchase it. This will ensure that the limited phosphate we have available gets put to it's maximum potential in producing food for the galaxy.

Radio Announcer: There's been some suggestion that this will unfairly favour Ukio over the other agricultural planets. Can you comment on that?

Ry: The Imperial Agriculture Program includes measures that will help farmers raise their production. I don't see how anyone using best farming practices will be cut out.

Kori: I farm in the north of Deema, so I can't speak for the other ag-worlds, but I have to say I find this policy really reassuring. We don't want to see phosphate simply go to the highest bidder. This way it's not about who can pay the highest price, it's about who can use that fertilizer to its best potential. I think that's fair.

Radio Announcer: Minister Ms. Kyver, how can farmers get more information and prepare to buy phosphate and other fertilizers through the new system?

Ry: We'll have information packages available through local government offices and agricultural supply outlets. Farmers can also contact the Imperial Ministry of Agriculture for help in putting their application together.

Radio Announcer: Thanks for filling us in on that. Now, let's switch gears and turn to a recent event: the loss of the Jedi agronomists. How do you think this is going to affect galactic agriculture? Kori, as a farmer, perhaps you could speak to that first.

Kori: We've definitely been used to having Jedi agronomists step in to solve problems for us. It's going to be an adjustment. I believe we can be resilient, but it'll take time.

Radio annoucer: Minister Ms. Kyver, what is the Empire's plan given the needs of farmers at this time?

Ry: The Empire is certainly committed to ensuring that farmers have what they need to feed the galaxy. In fact, we believe farmers need more support than the Republic Agricultural Administration was inclined to give them. That left farmers dependent on the Jedi AgriCorps, which wasn't a sustainable solution. I've personally been working on tools that we can give farmers to use to manage their own pest and disease problems, without the need for a Jedi agronomist to come in from outside.

Kori: I have to say, that's the one thing that's giving me hope in all this. We farm over a hundred thousand hectares of grain, so we've been trialling some of the agriculture Minister's products, and I have to say we've never seen better yields.

Radio Announcer: Minister Ms. Kyver, what sort of products are we talking about, and are there plans to make them more widely available?

Ry: The answer to the second question is absolutely yes. As for the specific products, a complete catalogue will soon be available through local ag supply outlets, but the two I'd like to highlight are Azopel and Matrazine. Matrazine is an improved broadleaf herbicide, and Azopel is good against general soil-borne pathogens like netatodes and fungi.

Kori: Matrazine is one we've been trialling, and I have to say, it's the bomb. We had almost no weeds, and harvest went alot faster, not to mention the bigger yield.

Radio Announcer: How does it work exactly?

Kori: You just spray it and it kills the weeds but not the grain. It's like majic.

Ry: It actually exploits a subtle difference in the basic physiology of grasses versus broadleaf plants, but I won't get too technical on us here.

Radio Accouncer: Now, before we move on I do want to ask about one thing. There's been a lot of rumours going around that the reactor explosion at the AgriCorps Symposium wasn't really an accident. Can you speak to that, Ms. Kyver?

Kori: Yeah, some people were saying it was the Nemoidians that rigged it.

Ry: It was certainly treated as an accident for the purpose of the investigation, but I'm sad to say there's more to it than that. It would seem that in their grab for power, the Jedi Knights decided not only to turn against the Emperor, but also to kill off the Jedi AgriCorps, whom they saw as weaker members of their Order. In fact, they directed the clone troops under their command to carry out the attack for them, not only on Deema but elsewhere too. As you know, the Emperor was able to put down the Jedi Knights' insurgency, but not before they'd done a great disservice to the people of the galaxy.

Radio Announcer: Who would have thought.

Kori: It really sucks, but it's good to know the Empire's got our backs.

Radio Announcer: Thanks for your comments, that's...

On hearing this, Devin, who had been listening to Ry Kyver's radio broadcast, flicked off the radio in disgust. Meanwhile, Eo knew nothing of the change that had come upon the galaxy, and simply stood in awe at seeing the tubers she'd planted sprout from the soil, but on Coruscant, Ry Kyver entered the Imperial Palace and bowed low before the imposing form of Darth Vader.


	12. The Hunt is On

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 12:** **The Hunt is On**

"Ry Kyver, you have learned much," Vader said over his rasping breath.

"Yes," Ry said, "I find the Dark Side most enlightening."

"What is your report?"

"All AgriCorps facilities are now under Imperial control. Here is a list of the Jedi and support staff from all locations, with notes on who remains unaccounted for." Ry handed him a data-card.

"I will deal with the Jedi personally," he said.

"Lord Vader, not all who served with AgriCorps were Jedi. Several belonged to a sect known as the Siluans. They lack the power to use the Force as the Jedi do, but they oppose my work and draw the balance of the Force toward the Light. I have already dealt with most of those who were formally associated with AgriCorps, but there are many more, thousands likely, scattered throughout the Galaxy."

"The Emperor desires their destruction."

"Yes," Ry said tersely, annoyed that Vader wouldn't realize that the intentions she was about to express were her own initiative. "I am going to hunt down every last one, but they are hard to find. The way they relate to the Force makes it very difficult to sense their presence precisely. What is your advice? How can I use the Force to sense them more clearly?"

"You use the Force to find all the secrets of agro-chemistry and you can't find a simple Siluan?"

Her eyes flashed. "Even the greatest Sith lords had trouble hunting them!"

"See?" Vader said, "I have roused your anger. The heat of anger drew you to the Dark Side. Now the cold of malice will serve you better. Give yourself to it and no Siluan will elude you."

"I will try," Ry said confidently.

"There is no try, only succeed, unless you are unworthy of the Emperor's favour."

"I will not fail," she said coldly. Her eyes smouldered, and after bowing again, Ry went out.


	13. Discoveries from the Shipwreck

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 13: Discoveries from the Shipwreck**

The seasons pass slowly on the little planet of lakes and forests where Varda made her hermitage. Hokto System Planetary Object 325 (or Hokto as Eo simply called it) takes almost three years by the standard chronometer to make one revolution around its star. And so one year after Eo's fateful crash-landing on Hokto, while Ry Kyver was celebrating her Empire Day as Imperial Minister of Agriculture (and persecutor of the Siluans), and while Devin Strong (now Devin Baxter) was mourning the first anniversary of the death of the Jedi Order, Eo was watching the spring leaves of her arrival turn yellow for fall.

During that year-long spring and summer and early fall, Varda often tested Eo, whether directly or indirectly. In the end, the result was indisputable. Varda was at last grudgingly obliged to agree with the Council of Reassignment (which she disliked in general) and Master Contar (whom she despised in particular): Eo could barely use the Force to lift so much as a handful of straw.

But luckily for Eo, Varda had no intention of using the Force to lay the many handfuls of straw with which they mulched their vegetable garden, or to plant seedlings, or to pull weeds, or to build and turn huge piles of compost, and it was chiefly with such activities as these that Varda kept Eo occupied during that long spring and summer. It was not until the yellow leaves on the trees began to fall and she and Eo were harvesting their last long row of jackbeets, that Varda said, "We still haven't done anything about a starship for you to get to the AgriCorps."

"Yes," Eo said reluctantly, "but the gap in the debris field can't be open yet, can it?"

"When it does open, you will have very little time to get out safely, so we need to start now."

"Yes," Eo said reluctantly, again. "But," she added hopefully, "if I try to go away from here I might get captured by the Separatists!" Although Eo didn't really think her capture was very likely, she hoped this danger would change Varda's mind about insisting that Eo serve a few years with the AgriCorps before finding a Siluan elder to complete her intended training.

Varda saw through Eo's objection and gave her a pointed look. "Should that occur," she said to her thirteen-year-old charge, "you will reflect on what I have been trying to teach you: that the way of a Siluan is peace in the face of adversity and compassion even for one's enemies."

"Yes," Eo said slowly again, since there was nothing else to say.

"I suppose they taught you something about mechanics in the temple?" Varda asked.

"A little only, not enough to fix a starship," Eo said as she struggled to pull out a particularly deep-rooted jackbeet.

"It doesn't have to be complicated," Varda said. "The ship I came in didn't crash. I destroyed the hyperdrive after I landed, and so that should be the only thing wrong with it. So if you can get the droid from Ava Yen's ship to check its components, we might find that the hyperdrive from his ship is sufficient for mine."

"But how will I know?"

"You don't need to know," Varda snapped. "All you need is for the droid to make a disc of the diagnostic scan and then I can read it on the computer of my ship. And if there's still any good fuel cells left, you might bring those back too."

Accordingly, when they had finished digging up the jackbeets and putting them in the root cellar, Eo took the little boat across the lake to the wreck of Ava Yen's starship. She didn't want to go, but a promise is a promise, and she had promised Varda that she would do this if Varda would train her in the way of the Siluans. Now that it was clear that there was no hope for her to be a Jedi Knight, Eo had her heart set on becoming a Siluan. Then she could seek the Light she loved without worrying about how good or bad she was at using the Force.

Yet it may be that Varda and Master Contar both underestimated Eo. The rocky shores on the end of the lake nearest the shipwreck had no distinguishing features to guide Eo, and she hadn't been back since Ava Yen's burial, yet she found her way straight there, knowing beyond knowing how to find the place, not of the wreck but of the one who lay near it, the one to whom she owed her new path. When she had moored the boat and scrambled up the bank and into the forest, she placed one hand over her heart and reached out to touch the stones of Ava Yen's grave with the other.

Eo then turned to the wreck, which stood as a mechanical oddity amid the tangle of the forest. Creeping vines had begun already to bring it under the forest's sway, and a little brown bird made a _tap-tap_ sound as she hopped along the upper hull. There, above the cockpit, sat a boxy astro-mech droid. The bird hopped up onto the droid, pecked its apex with her beak, and pooped down its side.

"You're welcome to stay if you like," Eo told the bird, "but I'll need to get a look at that droid."

The bird hopped aside and sat on a vine, surveying Eo with her head cocked to one side. Eo climbed up and looked the droid over carefully, then started pushing buttons. First one, then another, sometimes two at once, but the droid still sat silent, staring blankly into the dim forest.

"I wish I knew more about droids," Eo said to herself, "but that can't be helped now. There must be some way to turn you on!" She stood back, still perched on top of the starship, and stared at the droid with her arms crossed. The bird went back to tapping on top on the droid's head.

Eo and the bird both jumped when the droid suddenly lit up, beeped wildly and spun its head around faster and faster until its little lights made one continuous blurr. Then it stopped. The little brown bird hopped down from the starship and went to peck at the leaf-litter on the ground.

"Thank you," Eo said to the bird. "That was lucky."

The droid beeped.

"Can you run a diagnostic scan of the ship?" Eo asked the droid.

The droid's head began to spin again, and then stopped. It beeped elaborately and then went silent.

Eo looked hard at the droid, as if trying to see right inside its mechanical mind. "Can you run a diagnostic scan of the ship?" she repeated, more slowly this time. The droid gave a similar but non-identical response. Eo could hear the bird chirping to itself somewhere.

"Translate," Eo enunciated. "Can you please translate that for me?"

The droid repeated its routine, but then broke into a tinny mechanical voice: "For navigational assistance, say 'navigation.' For data access, say 'data.' For communication options, say 'communication.'"

"Com-mu-ni-ca-tion," Eo enunciated carefully.

"To lock in voice response, say 'voice.' For analog mode, say 'analog.'"

"VOICE."

"I am CX24, advanced navigational assistant. How can I help you?"

"Can you run a diagnostic scan of the ship?"

"Yes." There was an awkward pause as they stared at each other blankly.

"Please do so," Eo said at last.

"Scan will be ready in fifteen minutes," the droid said, then whirred and beeped, which Eo took to mean she could jump down to the ground and take a look inside the ship for herself.

Inside the ship was almost dark, though the cockpit was a bit brighter; despite being cracked, the forward viewshield let in the orange sunset light that shone through the forest. Eo checked and tested various options on the control panel, but whether due to lack of knowledge on her part or lack of function of the control panel, she could get no response, not even to turn on the lights. She was about to step outside again when she noticed something beside the pilot's seat: a beige cloth bag with a wide shoulder strap crumpled on top. She picked it up carefully and was about to look inside when CX24 beeped and whirred wildly again. Slinging the bag over her shoulder, Eo went outside and climbed up to face the droid again.

"Scan complete," the droid said in its vaguely feminine mechanical voice. "For verbal report, say 'verbal.' For data file, say 'data.'"

"Data," Eo said clearly. CX24 whirred and then ejected a flat object about the size of Eo's middle finger. She took it gently and put it in the cloth bag.

"Thank you," she said carefully.

"That does not compute," the droid said harshly. "For advanced options, say 'advanced options'..."

Eo sighed. This droid was quite the test of one's patience. She pressed the button on top of the droid's head, and CX24 whirred, beeped and went still again.

Eo guided the little boat back across the shining lake under a pink sunset sky.

"Did you get the scan?" Varda asked as Eo trudged into the hut where they lived. Varda was stirring something in a big pot, and the hut was full of steam.

"I think so. The droid was a little batty, but she gave me a disc of the scan, supposedly. Do you think the computer on your ship can read it?"

"You will find out," Varda said, "tomorrow. It's almost time for dinner, but your work tomorrow will be to try. The computer hasn't been turned on since I got here, but you should be able to get it to work."

Eo digested this for a moment, then changed the subject. "I found something else on the ship too, Ava Yen's maybe?" she said, and took the cloth bag off from around her shoulders and handed it to Varda.

Varda wiped her hands on her sari and took the bag. Reaching inside, she pulled out a thick tablet with a solar panel on one side and a screen and some controls on the other.

"What's that?" Eo asked. It looked too clunky to be a datapad.

"It's a solar-powered digital file reader," Varda said, and turned it on. It took awhile to boot up, but once it did, Varda scrolled partway through its list of files. "Hmm...mostly agricultural yield data," she said, and handed it back to Eo.

Eo took the device and kept scrolling. Surely there was more, she felt, then came to the last file. _The Sayings of Ava Shio_ it was titled. Eo gasped and opened it.

 _142\. In life let us say, "Yet shall the Light be unbroken."_ _In death let us also say, "Yet shall the Light be unbroken."_

 _143\. If you really want, you can love all. If you really want, you can become all Light._

 _144\. Beware of fear, and anger, and hate, for these lead to the Dark Side. So we are taught, but remember also: behind all stands the Ego._

There was more, but Eo stopped reading and handed to digital file reader back to Varda. "Look!" she said, "they sound like Jedi sayings, but I never heard these ones before."

Varda's eyes went wide as she scrolled through the file. "It's good that you found this," she said. "It's an except from a larger collection of works called _The Way of a Siluan._ You must commit these sayings to memory; all the Siluans memorize them as part of their training."

"Does it have an audio option?" Eo asked. "Maybe we can listen to it while we're working."

"Play with it; you might find audio in there. But I don't recommend listening to it while you work. This is an important point, actually. The garden is to the Siluan what the lightsabre is to the Jedi: not a tool or a task only, but a way to be attentive to the Force. So you need to be still inside and pay attention."

"Yes, I'll make sure," Eo said, and taking the file reader from Varda, she held it close to her heart. She looked up into Varda's brown face and was about to ask a question when Varda, who wasn't looking at her, began to speak.

"I remember those sayings," she said wistfully. "Someone was reading them aloud on the last evening that I spent with the Siluans at their monastery on Yemer. I was very happy there," she said, "before the War."


	14. Winter is hard here

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 14: Winter is Hard Here**

As half a year passed in the galaxy outside, fall turned to winter on the little planet Eo called Hokto.

"You must prepare yourself," Varda said. "Winter is hard here."

Eo had loved winter at the Jedi Temple: the soft glow of the Temple lamps; the thick, soft clothes the Jedi younglings were assigned to wear for the season; the sharp, bright stars seen from a Temple parapet. There was nothing to prepare Eo for what winter meant on that little planet of the Hokto system. _Winter is hard_. Three little words glossed over three hundred short foggy days and three hundred long, cool, rainy nights of water dripping through gaps in the roof; of waking to fingers hard to unclench after sleeping curled up against the damp cold.

 _Winter is hard here,_ Varda had said, yet for Eo, winter was also beautiful. Every morning after warming her hands over the steam from the big kettle, Eo would step out into the great quiet of the garden. There, the stately _brakkas_ with their dark frilly leaves held orbs of rainwater, and the fleshy stems of a plant called _chadris_ shone red and orange and yellow in the grey light. With a small knife Eo would cut their leaves for breakfast, carefully setting aside the little purple slugs that looked up at her with oogly eyes. Here they were the natives, and she the alien.

On one such occasion, when Eo had finished collecting armload of greens, she stopped for a moment, and with her feet planted on the ground, she looked up into the low, grey sky. As she let the raindrops kiss her face, Eo soaked in the energies of the plants around her: some waiting in winter's long meditation, some seizing even the grey light to grow ever upwards. They too were her teachers now in this gentle way that required only her willingness to seek the Light. In the power, the wisdom, and the quiet of the garden, Eo felt she was in the Temple again.

The thought of the Temple brought back the memory of her friend Lin Mang, who always tried to cheer her up after a bad training session. Being so talented and so strong in the Force, Lin must be a Padawan under a Jedi master now, Eo thought, off in the galaxy somewhere, brandishing her lightsaber against the onslaught of the Separatists. Eo imagined her Yemerian friend in a brown Jedi robe, with her elegant long lizard tail sweeping out behind her. At one time, the thought her friend's success would have made Eo jealous, but now she dreamed of their meeting again one day, as Jedi and Siluan, each working for the peace and order of the galaxy in her own way. But first Lin had the war to face, Eo remembered, and sent out a wish for her safety, trusting it would reach Lin through the Force.

"Eo! Where are you?" Varda called from the hut, and Eo snapped out of her reverie and ran inside. She dumped her armload of greens on the table, and Varda pointed to a pile of thin reeds for Eo to start weaving into a new rainhat while she waited for breakfast to be ready.

"Varda, you do ever miss the Jedi temple?" Eo asked as she sat down on a mat and started her work.

"I came here to get away from everything, so no, I miss nothing." Varda saw that Eo looked sad when she said this, so she added, "Do you?"

"Sometimes. But not as much as I thought I would. When I'm in the garden, I feel I'm in the Temple. I'm very happy that I can learn to be a Siluan. It's like being a plant: my roots are in the soil of the Jedi, but with my branches I'm finding the path that's right for me. If I can spend the rest of my life tending my garden and meditating and studying the Siluan texts, I will be very happy."

With the grey weather, Varda was in a dark mood and found Eo's youthful simplicity jarring. "You think your life will be so easy? The way of a Siluan is hard," she said, and shook her head. "The way of a Siluan is absolute nonviolence. Do you have any concept of what that means?"

Eo scowled at the reeds she was braiding together and tried to think. Wasn't the meaning obvious? Varda must be looking for some deeper answer. "Maybe that's why the Siluans have their gardens and their vow of poverty," she managed eventually. "That way they can live lightly on the land, without taking from anyone else or doing violence to anyone even indirectly."

Varda considered this for a moment. It was actually a better answer than she'd expected, but still not the point she was trying to make. "It means," Varda said pointedly, "that not if, but when you are hurt, you indulge neither hatred nor retaliation; when you suffer loss, you accept it with peace; when some enemy comes to destroy you and everything you worked for, you wish their wellbeing even as you wish your own. Are you able to do that?"

Eo slumped, as if by that question Varda had laid a sudden weight on her shoulders. She searched herself: how had she ever reacted to anyone who hurt her or was at odds with her, someone she might consider an enemy? The image of Master Contar flashed across her mind, looking down on Eo with pursed lips. But no, even if Master Contar was a little mean, she was only doing her job, and she'd done Eo a favour by introducing her to Ava Yen. There was the war, of course. The Separatists were enemies, but they were just a faceless mass to Eo, one she'd never had to face and maybe never would. But then there was the Temple bombing, less than a year before she'd left with Ava Yen. What shook Eo to the core was not simply the fact that a suicide bomber set off an explosion in a hangar of the Temple. Rather, the young woman who was ultimately convicted as the the orchestrator of the attack was a young Jedi, a Padawan only five years older than Eo. For years they'd shared a common life as Jedi younglings, the older children helping the younger. And yet Bariss Offee was willing to endanger her own fellow Jedi and strike out against what they held sacred. If Eo ever had to face Bariss again, would she, could she treat her peacefully and truly desire her wellbeing?

"I don't know," Eo said at length. "If I say I can face evil with peace, maybe I'm just fooling myself, but if I say I can't, isn't becoming able to the whole point of all my training?"

" _I don't know_ is a good answer," Varda said sternly. "I suggest you reflect on it further."

Eo focused again on braiding the reeds, then decided to speak up. "But Varda, it isn't so different from the way of the Jedi, is it?"

"In theory," Varda said dryly.

"But Varda, you're a Jedi yourself, yet it seems as if you don't like the Jedi at all!"

"You are young," Varda said, "and for you everything is beautiful. I am old and I've seen too much. I've seen the Jedi deny everything they believe in."

Eo looked up from her work, troubled to hear Varda speak like this. "Is that why you came here?" she asked, tentatively.

"Partly. In war one loses many things, including oneself." Varda spoke bitterly, staring into the pot she was stirring on the woodstove.

"But whatever happened, there must be a way to heal it. Isn't there? I want you to be well again, Varda."

"That is good," said Varda. "A Siluan should wish for all life to be well, even if she has no power to make it so."

With grey day after grey day and conversations such as this, Eo found that winter was indeed hard on the little planet she called Hokto.


	15. Electrolyte and Mycorrhizae

**The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 15: Electrolyte and mycorrhizae**

Years later, when Varda learned of all that happened after Eo left Hokto, Varda remembered the conversations they had during that long winter, and realized that none of her teaching was lost on the scrawny teenager with whom she shared five years of her life.

But in the meantime, as Eo passed her fifteenth birthday, they were only just coming to the tail end of Hokto's long, wet winter. Varda was putting an empty bucket under an apparently unfixable leak in the roof of the hut, and saying to Eo, "Did you change the electrolyte in the anti-gravity module of the starship yet?"

"No, I'll have to get some from the wreck," Eo said, without looking at Varda. She was standing in the doorway of the hut, trying to stay dry while angling her digital file reader so that its solar panel would catch enough light to power the unit and allow her to read.

"Then I suggest you do so," Varda said, as she watched water drip through the roof and into the bucket. "Right now," she added pointedly, when Eo showed no sign of moving.

Eo sighed. Taking one last look at the dimly-powered screen and _The Sayings of Ava Shio_ , she turned off the digital file reader and stowed it back in Ava Yen's beige cloth bag, then headed down to the lake to get the boat.

Eo had in fact gone back and forth across the lake many times that winter, first for the hyperdrive module (which showed no problems in the scan), then for spare thermal adaptors, then for extra fusion plugs. As much as possible, Varda insisted on Eo doing this work herself, even though Varda was the more skilled in mechanics. "You never know when you'll need to depend on your own skill to get a starship moving," she told Eo once earlier that winter.

At this, Eo had scowled slightly. "I thought that Siluans stayed in one place."

"There are exceptions to every rule," Varda said sternly, "like Ava Yen."

Eo couldn't argue with that, and so off she went again and again, across the lake to the shipwreck to get spare parts and back again to Varda's starship to install them, her patience for the work wearing a little thinner each time. It wasn't just that Eo didn't like the cold metal and chemical stench of mechanics. Everything just took her so long. For a professional mechanic like Shie Baxter, scrounging electrolyte from the wreck would have taken less than two hours, including the time it takes to paddle across the lake and back. But with limited tools and limited skill, it was already noon by the time Eo had located the bolts that held the anti-gravity module in place and patiently removed them without the aid of a ratchet driver. And when she had finally extracted the anti-gravity module and drained some electrolyte into a make-shift container, it was nearly sunset.

As Eo paddled back across the lake with her container of electrolyte and walked carefully with it up the far shore to Varda's starship, she felt truly wretched. Her wrists ached from loosening bolts with a nut driver in the tight spots where the rachet handle didn't fit. Her arms were frozen to the bone after a day up against cold metal, and her hands reeked with spilled blue electrolyte. As she walked through the forest to Varda's starship, a deep sense of dissonance only made her feel worse. All around her, the great trees bearded with grey lichens and bright mosses, the tall sword-ferns, the tree-frogs creaking out their strange song, and the little brown bird hopping in the leaf litter, all were wholly grounded in the ever-present _now_. She alone was divided and scattered to the winds of her nattering thoughts: _I want to leave here, I don't want to leave here, I don't want to do this anymore._

Too tired and discouraged to do any more that day, Eo left the makeshift container of electrolyte in Varda's starship, then walked back through the forest toward the hut, coming at the garden from the north.

North of the garden and the hut there was a clearing where a few skinny trees danced around an open space covered in fallen leaves. There, to Eo's surprise, was Varda, searching for something on the ground.

"Come and see," Varda said.

Eo walked over to find Varda brushing aside the leaf litter to reveal a pale green orb, wrapped in thin pink scales emanating from it's base. For a moment she forgot her discouragement.

"What is it?" Eo asked.

"Do you remember the tall plant with the round leaves that grew here last summer?"

"Yes, but it's dead now, isn't it?"

"Its root stays alive in the soil all winter, and as soon as the end of winter is in sight, it prepares to bloom even before it puts up leaves. This is its flower bud," Varda said, and showing Eo one of the green orbs she'd picked, she sliced it open with her knife. "See? The little flowers are waiting to bloom."

"Are we going to eat them?"

"Yes. They are bitter, but bitter is good after a long winter. Help me find a few more, and then we can eat."

Eo searched carefully for the green orbs beneath the matted leaves of last fall, feeling her energy come back to her as she touched something natural again. She had found several of the strange flowerbuds when Varda asked, "How did it go with that electrolyte? I didn't see you all day."

Eo sighed, deflated again. "I got it, eventually, but I thought it was too late to finish tonight. Tomorrow I can finish, somehow," she said, with more resignation than resolve.

"I could make it easy for you," Varda said, "but then what kind of teacher would I be?" She paused and looked pointedly at Eo, who sighed again but didn't answer or look up from the ground. Varda continued, "The problem is that you think fixing the starship is taking you away from your training, but actually it is your training. By facing what you find difficult and distasteful, you can become a true Siluan. You can learn to face everything with peace, even with joy."

"How can I enjoy something I don't want to do?" Eo asked bitterly.

"I didn't say to _enjoy_ , I said to do so _with joy_ ; there is a difference. But try, and you will see."

"Yes," Eo said, somewhat mechanically, and Varda cringed a little, realizing she'd been talking at Eo not to her.

An uneasy silence settled between them as they continued foraging. Varda was about to speak again, when Eo stopped and gasped. "Varda, look!" she said, her voice coming to life again. "The roots of the plants are growing in this old piece of wood!"

Eo handed Varda a piece of half-rotten branch, shot through with feathery white filaments.

"They aren't roots," Varda said after a quick look, "they are mycelia. The mushrooms we see are only the fruit; the mycelia are the true body of the fungus."

" _Revere the fungi, for to plants they are as the Force itself,_ " Eo quoted.

" _The Sayings of Ava Shio_?" Varda asked.

"Yes, but I don't understand it," Eo said. "I thought fungi caused plant disease."

"Ava Shio was probably referring to mycorrhizae," Varda said.

"What are mycorrhizae?" Eo asked, a bit surprised at the term.

"One more thing they should have taught you in the Temple," Varda said, a little bitterly, but then shook herself and spoke more gently. "Mycorrhizae are a special class of fungi. They form associations with plant roots and help them acquire mineral nutrients in exchange for sugars from the plant."

"But then how are they like the Force?"

"From the point of view of the plant roots, the mycorrhizae _surround them, they penetrate them, they bind their world together_." Varda's voice became almost a chant as she adapted the ancient Jedi saying. "A whole forest can form a single network in this way, and even the trees down by the lake know that we are here foraging, because they are connected to the plants here through the mycorrhizae. For them that perception is not unlike sensing a disturbance in the Force."

Eo's face was bright again as she put out her hand, and Varda passed the branch back to her.

"You must pay careful attention to these things," Varda said. "The way of a Siluan is in the small things, or the seemingly small things, the things that are often overlooked."

Years later, Varda wondered if Eo's Force-connection with fungi began that day, but for now she simply watched Eo smell the mycelia and look at them carefully. Then scraping aside the leaf-litter, Eo put the branch back on the ground where she'd found it and covered it with leaves again.

 **Author's note:** Truth is stranger than fiction. The plant with the green orbs is actually real; it's called _fuki_ in Japanese, also known as Japanese butterbur. The West Coast rainforest has a similar species of the genus _Petasites_. We grow _fuki_ at our farm.


	16. Neighbours

_Chapters 16 and 17 return to Devin, who was introduced in chapters 6 and 7 as the former AgriCorps Jedi who settled in the backwater prairie district known as the Moosachu Plains,_ on the planet Nechako _, after hearing that the Jedi Order had been destroyed._

 **Chapter 16: Neighbours**

 _If a little is good, more must be better._ This, Devin concluded, had been his mother's adage for fertilizer application, because during his first growing season on Nechako he pulled in wholly acceptable grain crops and raised perfectly healthy _inu_ calves without any additional fertilizer whatsoever.

A lot happened during that first growing season. When Devin and Shie made their decision to stay in Moosachu it was only spring, but by midsummer, to Devin's chagrin, the powers that be in the capital city of Bulkley saw fit to sign the Imperial Accord, bringing Nechako rapidly and smoothly under Imperial control. And not long after harvest that fall, Devin and Shie's son Jonah was born.

"Jonah is the first person in the Moosachu Plains to get an Imperial ID card from birth!" Mara Wong chirped as Devin stood at the counter of The Moosachu Farming and Community Cooperative, filling out the forms to get Jonah his ID card. Mara was one of several neighbours who took turns staffing The Co-op, as it was usually called. Housed in a boxy warehouse-like building plunked down in the middle of the prairie, The Co-op served as Moosachu's agricultural supply dealer, post office, government liaison, general store, community space, cafe and centre of pretty much everything.

Devin's polite response regarding his son's citizenship was sufficient encouragement for Mara.

"It's a new day for Nechako!" she sang, her smile showing up the wrinkles in her motherly face. "The Empire's going to invest in the mines and my daughter'll have a job again before winter is over. And when the mines get going again there'll be more demand for our crops and more money for schools and roads and..." Mara could likely have bubbled on like this about Nechako's bright future under Imperial rule, but Devin broke in.

"And I've heard Nechako made the cut for the Phosphate Acquisition Program," Devin said, forcing a smile.

"Yes, aren't we lucky? But you haven't signed up for the IAP yet, have you?"

"The IAP?" Devin gave her a confused look. After hearing the Imperial Minister of Agriculture give a radio broadcast telling farmers that the destruction of his beloved AgriCorps was the fault of the Jedi Knights, he'd forsworn listening to Galactic Ag Radio and its frequent broadcasts explaining the IAP.

"Yes, the Imperial Agriculture Program. They're being careful to make sure that only good farmers can buy phosphate now, since the supply is so limited, so you need to apply before you buy your fertilizer."

"And how do I do that?" Devin asked, trying to take the edge off his voice.

Mara opened a drawer behind the counter and pulled out a memory stick. "It's all on here," she said, handing it to him.

Devin took the fat, stubby memory stick, looked down at it and then looked up at Mara. "Is it really that long an application?" he asked.

"Well, you'll need your last three years' crop data to prove that you meet the yield targets."

"And what if I don't?" Devin asked, searching Mara's face, which was all calm optimism.

"Don't worry," she said, reaching out a work-worn hand across the counter to him. "If you don't, you just need to show that your production plan incorporates the methods outlined in the Best Agricultural Practices document, which is on there too. Then you can make sure that you'll get up to the targets for staying in the program."

Devin looked at the memory stick, then at Mara again, not sure what to say.

"Don't worry," Mara said again. "It might seem overwhelming now, but it will all be for the best. Silas signed up right away and we've had our best yields ever. We even have extra money to send his sister to the academy next year. I'm sure Silas can help you if you have any questions." Mara's son Silas farmed just west of Devin's place, and she was extremely proud of him for taking over the farm at age fifteen when his dad passed away.

"Thanks, that's good to know," Devin said, forcing himself to smile. What else could he do? He wanted to take Mara by the shoulders and shake her and scream, _They aren't telling you everything!_ _They lied about what they did to the AgriCorps, they lied about what they did to all the Jedi. You really think they aren't going to screw over a backwater planet like Nechako when it suits them?_ But he couldn't say that, not even if he put it more politely. He had a newborn son to care for now, and couldn't take the risk of finding out what would happen if word got around to the local Imperial Representative that he didn't share his neighbours' faith in their new government.

Mara was oblivious to all this. She smiled back at Devin and brushed her dyed-red hair out of her shining eyes. "It's a new day!" she said happily. "We finally have a Galactic government that's looking out for us farmers!"

* * *

Driving home over the golden prairie under endless blue skies, Devin drummed his fingers on the steering console of his little speeder. If it were just some faceless bureaucrat at the helm of the Imperial Agriculture Program, he might not have been so suspicious. But it was Ry Kyver, his own former colleague in the Jedi AgriCorps. He'd never really liked her, even back in those days. Not that he'd known her well. They met only once, a year ago, back at the AgriCorps station on Deema, one day when he'd gone to the refectory for lunch, and found a woman he didn't know sitting at the table and eating the sandwich he'd stowed in the fridge for himself.

"Hi, I'm Devin," he'd said, trying to start things off on the right foot. Her Force-signature suggested she might be a Jedi, so he added, "Are you new to the station here?"

The woman, about ten years old than him, he guessed, had taken her time to finish chewing a rather large bite of his sandwich and then said, "No, just visiting. I'm cross-posted with Core AgriChem." Core AgriChem was, at the time, the galaxy's leading supplier of agricultural inputs.

"I didn't know AgriCorps Jedi were allowed to take corporate placements," he'd said, a bit surprised, and watched her take another bite of his sandwich.

"There's a lot of things you don't know about the AgriCorps," she'd said with her mouth full, at which point he turned around and left. He learned later by asking around that she was Ry Kyver. How she had managed to not only survive the Jedi Purge, but even to live openly and serve as the Imperial Minister of Agriculture he hardly dared to guess. All he knew was that hundreds of other Jedi who he'd rather see alive were gone and she was still here.

 _Hold no grudge,_ said his memory of Master Lu, his former Jedi mentor, _for to hold a grudge is the death of a Jedi_. Devin sighed and shook his head. But what could he do? With one hand he ran his fingers through his short brown hair and scratched his head. _Do what you have always done,_ came the answer, as if Master Lu were there beside him. What he'd always done in the AgriCorps was to keep an open mind and go talk to local farmers about how things were actually working in practice. With that in mind, he decided to take Mara at her word and stop in to see her son Silas on his way home.

He arrived just in time to see a shiny new spray-rig taxi up to a big, red metal barn. A tall, skinny figure in a dirty blue hazmat suit waved, took off its safety mask, and yelled, "Hey Dev-man!"

Devin was never sure why that nickname managed to haunt him wherever he went, but he never had the heart to ask people to stop using it, so he just waved and called back, "Hey Silas, you busy right now?"

Silas climbed down from the spray-rig, safety mask dangling around his neck, and loped over to where Devin was standing. "I'm not busy if you're here to visit," he said, and grinned.

Devin smiled back a little awkwardly. Silas was only seventeen to Devin's twenty-three, and always seemed ridiculously happy to see Devin. Was he lonely? Devin wondered. He didn't seem to have any friends in the area. Under normal circumstances, Devin would quickly have taken Silas under his wing as a little brother. But with Nechako's short planetary cycle, spring had turned to harvest in just four months standard time, and so the loss of the young Jedi he'd mentored in the AgriCorps was still too raw for him to feel up to befriending Silas just now. Besides, Silas was always happy to talk about the one thing he knew a lot about, and so Devin didn't feel too bad about getting straight down to the business of agriculture.

"Your mom said I should come talk to you about the IAP," Devin said, "apparently I need to sign up if I want to buy fertilizer for next season."

"It's not that complicated," Silas said and shrugged. "There's only two things: you got to follow the BAP guidelines and you got to keep your yields up. But it's easy 'cause if you follow the BAP stuff there's almost no way you couldn't produce that much."

"BAP? I thought it was IAP."

"Best Agricultural Practices. It's part of the IAP. It's great. I used to have a hell of a time dealing with bugs and stuff on my grain crops, but with the BAP way I just spray Azopel three times before the season starts and that deals with all the soil-borne bugs, then four rounds of Matrazine during the season to clean up all the broad-leafed weeds. You should see it! Best yields ever."

"Is that why you got a new spray rig?" Devin looked beyond Silas to the shiny airplane-like structure behind him, with its 30 m wingspan of chemical spray jets.

"I wasn't going to, but they've got a subsidy so if you sign up in the first three years of the program you get to trade in your old equipment for new stuff made to work better with the BAP guidelines. I even got a new drill seeder out of it too! Oh yeah, and about drill seeding...they've got it all figured out. You just spray AllGone and it kills _everything_ and you just plant into clean stubble. It's great."

Devin scanned the nearby fields. A herd of red-and-white Nechako Longhorns mooed in a pen nearby, waiting to head off for slaughter. There was more to raising them than just growing grain for them to eat, Devin knew. "But what about your pasture management?" he asked.

"Oh, I spot treat that with Matrazine too, to kill down the Nechako thistle and stuff. But they've got stuff for livestock too so you can raise more head in closer quarters without them getting worms and stuff. At least it works great on my Nechako Longhorns. It's probably good on those _inu_ you raise too."

"It sounds pretty different from what I've been doing," Devin said. Back on Deema, he was used to spraying lots of things on crops: plant hormones to steer crop growth for more fruit versus more leaves, micronutrients for improved disease resistance and crop nutrient content, and amino acid analogs (lethal to plants) to spot-treat perennial weeds. But he'd never heard of any of the chemicals Silas mentioned, and didn't like the way they smelled on his young neighbour's hazmat suit.

Silas noticed Devin's uncertain look and clapped Devin on the shoulder. "Just try it, man," he said, "you won't look back."

Devin gave Silas a slightly cross-eyed look, but Silas just smiled at him. "Don't worry," he said, "if you have any trouble getting going with it, I'm here to help. That's what neighbours are for, right?"

Devin looked blankly at Silas for a moment, not sure what to say. He was realizing suddenly, painfully, that he really liked this homeschooled farm kid and his Moosachu-born-and-bred mother, who'd brought Devin's family a whole week's worth of homemade casseroles when Devin's mom passed away. His heart sank all the more to think just how much he doubted that the Empire they had such great hopes for would ultimately be kind to people like them. But he couldn't say that, and so for the _nth_ time that day, Devin forced a smile. "Thanks," he said, with a little nod. "I'll let you know if I need any help."


	17. Futility

**The Way of a Siluan, Chapter 17: Futility**

(directly continued from chapter 16)

 _ _There is nothing,__ _said Master Lu,_ _ _more important than observation. A Jedi can feel the movement of the Force within the web of life, or hear it as a song of many voices. You must be attentive to this. There is no agriculture without some adjustment to the balance of energies among organisms, but in any change you make, first you must look, you must listen, you must sense the way of the Force, not only in this present moment but as it moves between past and future. Then you can choose the moment of action, and the nature of action, that will be effective in light of the whole.__

A black hawk dropped like a bolt of lightning out of the pure blue sky, pulling Devin back to the here and now. It landed with a _whomp_ just five metres from where he stood in his empty grain field. There was the shriek of a prairie dog meeting its death, and the hawk looked up at Devin as if it minded his being there, before tearing into the prairie dog's red flesh. Devin looked away.

 _All around him lay_ the Moosachu Plains, that undulating prairie where grasses wave and toss in one continuous sweep for a hundred kilometres at a time. After four standard months of living there, the place still felt so foreign to him. Back on Deema, where he'd served in the Jedi AgriCorps, the landscape was compact and orderly: square little rice paddies patch-worked in with nut and fruit groves, and fields of sweet potatoes all hilled up in straight lines. Moosachu wasn't like that. Except for patches where farmers put up fences, cut hay or grew grain, the landscape was one nation of native grass, all humming a basal ison in their deep, throaty voices. He had yet to feel at home in it.

Nonetheless, he tried to listen. All that past summer, his neighbour Silas' place had boasted productivity. The rapid growth of grain and pasture, green beyond natural green, thrummed with a high-pitched energy. It was not so much vibrant as it was frenzied, and Devin felt somehow that it was a song in which many voices had been silenced and only a few sang strongly. His farm couldn't boast the same growth, but its energy was steady and its song, though dominated by the voice of grass, was subtle. To his Jedi-sense, there was something almost Dark about what was happening to his neighbours' fields.

Not that Devin was wholly uncomfortable with "dark." _There is Light and there is light, there is Dark and there is dark,_ Master Lu used to tell him. _Weed out of you what is Dark, and cultivate what is Light, but the dark and the light you must hold ever in balance._ Agriculture, more than anything in his Jedi training, had taught Devin to respect that balance. As much as farming was about feeding people through the miracles of birth, germination and growth, it was also about slaughtering livestock, decimating "weed" and "pest" species, and leaving billions of soil organisms dead in his wake every time he tilled the soil. Yet there was balance: out of death, life and out of decay, growth. What he sensed in his neighbours' land felt dark beyond that balance.

Looking out across the grain-fields and pastures he'd worked all that past season, he wanted to vow to never let that shadow touch them, but he didn't. In his mind's eye, he saw his wife Shie nursing their son Jonah. He was counting on that land to yield what he needed to provide for his family. Even if it meant bowing to the Imperial Agriculture Program to get the fertilizer he needed? Devin ducked his head. He didn't want to answer that question.

He turned to see the hawk finish its gory meal. The hawk gave Devin a dirty look and shat in his general direction, then flew off to become a dark speck against the blue sky. Devin got back into his speeder. As he finished the drive home, he tried not to make eye contact, as it were, with the land around him.

* * *

"If it doesn't feel right, don't do it," was all Shie said that night at dinner when Devin told her about the new rules around fertilizer access. "What does your dad think?"

"You know him. I told him everything and all he said was 'Damn government bull-crap!'"

"So then if he doesn't care then just don't do it. Kat Tam was telling me you can still get ammonium nitrate outside of the Imperial thing, so why not just do that?"

Devin bit his lip. "But that's just straight nitrogen," he said. "It takes a lot of phosphate to make grain and it takes a lot of phosphate to make bones, and all we produce here is grains and livestock."

Shie was a mechanic, not a farmer, and just nodded.

"There is no way on the face of this planet I can run a viable farm here without that phosphate," Devin said. "I'd give anything right now to be within even a hundred kilometres of a dairy barn, or a cannery or a mill or anything with waste material we could use instead of buying in fertilizer, but out here, there's nothing."

"Out here it's also less likely for anyone to figure out who you are."

"I know," Devin said, "but that doesn't give me fertilizer."

* * *

The best news Devin had all week came from Aggie, of all people. Aggie the tractor-orange agricultural protocol droid, to whom he had assigned his least favourite tasks: keeping inventory, tracking weather data and logging input from the field monitor drones. Aggie, whom he did his best to keep out of his hair, came to him when he was sweeping up in the barn one night and said, "Devin, it sounds like you're having trouble with fertilizer access..."

"Yep, you got that right," Devin said.

"May I suggest that buying in feed grain might be one way to get past that?"

"Aggie, the price of grain is too high and the price of _inu_ meat is too low for that to make any sense whatsoever."

Aggie continued, undaunted: "Several years ago a team from the Jedi AgriCorps conducted research on Lothal about intensive rotational grazing with _inu,_ the same bovine species you are raising. The results suggest that certain rotational grazing patterns, if coupled with supplemental feed, can improve pasture performance such that net agronomic and financial benefits result."

Devin rubbed his forehead. Did she have to be so obtuse and long-winded? "Aggie, you seriously need a better vocabulator," he said.

Aggie was incapable of facial expression, but she paused for a moment at this. "I regret that I am only a prototype," she said, sounding slightly hurt, "but I do highly recommend that you review the data."

"We already rotate our pastures."

Aggie projected a holographic diagram of a pasture rotation scheme. "The rotational grazing patterns the study describes are somewhat different. A mobile feed unit is placed in a temporarily fenced area approximately thirty square meters per hundred live-weight of livestock. They intensively graze the area, while also spreading phosphate and other nutrients from the feed grain, carried in their waste matter. As a result of intensive grazing plus additional nutrients, forage crops regenerate 40% more rapidly than they otherwise would, with a 30% higher feed value and corresponding livestock weight gains."

"Yeah, but you can't stock that many animals per hectare without getting worm problems."

"The key feature of the system is the short rotation time. In this study, livestock spent only one to three days in each plot before the enclosure was moved, minimizing exposure to parasites. I anticipate that you will consider the movement of fences to be too labour intensive, but I assure you that we already have the mechanisms required to direct the movement through the use of our existing field monitor drones."

Devin stood, looking at the diagram and the data table beneath it, not realizing that he was stroking his beard.

"I have acquired information to the effect that your neighbours Kat Tam and Ben Carson both currently sell feed grain which you could acquire at a reasonable cost if so desired," Aggie added when he said nothing.

A little smile curled Devin's lips. It was almost poetic. That Jedi traitor Ry Kyver could spin all the webs she wanted around his fertilizer supply, yet he would slip through by a simple trick of agricultural ecology. And even if the rotational grazing scheme gave him only half the results found on Lothal, he'd still be doing OK. Devin's smile turned into a grin. He clapped Aggie's metallic shoulder.

"Aggie," he said, "you're fantastic. We're going to try that. And as soon as I've got the money, I'm buying you a new vocabulator."

Devin's increased pasture yield was indeed only about half what the researchers observed on Lothal, but with careful management, it was enough for the farm to earn his family's living in the first, second and third growing seasons of using the new system. But by the fourth and fifth growing seasons, both his livestock growth data and his Jedi-sense for the song of the land told him that something was changing. By the end of the eighth growing season, in year five of Imperial rule, his farm income was no longer enough to support his family, which now included a second child, a baby girl named Siri.

"We can't afford to keep doing this," Devin told Aggie as they swished through the tall pasture grass one autumn evening, checking the herds. "We're spending too much on feed grain."

"I ran another set of tests," Aggie said. "and perhaps I understand now what is happening. The results suggest that the grain you've been buying from your neighbour carries residues of the herbicide Matrazine, which is inhibiting the growth of broad-leafed plants, including many leguminous species. Without the fixation of nitrogen by the legumes, the feed value of the rangeland has been much lower. I regret now that I advised you to provide additional grain rations, as it has only exacerbated the problem by bringing in additional Matrazine."

Devin stuffed his fists in his pockets and clenched his jaw. If Ry Kyver was trying to keep people like him from farming outside of the Imperial Agriculture Program, she had won. She had won because by some devilry in her design of Matrazine, bovine digestion left it completely unaltered.

Looking out across the sea of grass that was his unprofitable farm, Devin wanted to curse Ry Kyver, somewhere out there in the galaxy, getting paid a government salary to wreck this kind of havoc, but for the sake of what was left of his life as a Jedi, he bit his tongue. Instead, he shook his head and ran his hand through his short brown hair, then turned to Aggie, who was standing beside him, apologizing profusely.

"It's not your fault, Aggie," Devin said. "This stuff is so new, you couldn't have known. But we need a better way. There's got to be a better way."

But for once Aggie had nothing to say, and in the song of grass and sky, there was no answer.


	18. Success?

**Happy Star Wars Day! May the 4th be with you.**

* * *

 **The Way of a Siluan, Chapter 18: Success?**

Late in year 1 of Imperial rule, or 19 BBY

"Vader, I see that our most charming pupil is making great progress," the Emperor spoke from the shadows.

Darth Vader let his mechanical _inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale_ hang in the air for a moment before he answered. "She is growing stronger in the Dark Side," he said somewhat grudgingly.

"Not only strong, Vader. Her work with agro-chemistry reveals a rather subtle command of the Dark Side of the Force, and I find her zeal to destroy that ancient and backward sect most endearing. The Jedi could have made a knight of her if they'd had more patience, but it is well that they failed. Her anger at being rejected has rendered her most useful."

"Yet..."

"Yes, I see it, Vader, I see it. A time will come when she outgrows her willingness to serve us," the Emperor said, yet he did not sound as if this worried him.

"Her excessive self-confidence suggests that will happen sooner rather than later."

The Emperor smiled a little smile at his apprentice. "Are you jealous, Vader?"

Vader did not answer, but his master could sense a tacit admission, as if Vader had narrowed his eyes at this.

"Be jealous, Vader, it will only make you stronger. But fear not. She is to me as Dooku, useful and disposable."

"If she is disposable, I suggest we dispose of her quickly. I am sure the Imperial Agriculture Program can continue without her."

The Emperor gave Vader a cold and pointed look. "I have other intentions for her which she has yet to fulfil. There rises One whom she must destroy lest that One destroy what she has accomplished for us."

"Then I can deal with them both."

"You are no doubt capable, Vader, of destroying that One, but I envision greater aims, which you have yet to comprehend. It is only in destroying that One that she will gain the power to complete the final task I require of her, and in that task Vader, you have no part, for you have studied so very little of biology."

Hot anger smouldered beneath Vader's mask, but his master only laughed softly at him.

"Fret not, Vader. As I have said, she is to me as Dooku, useful but disposable. When the time comes, the pleasure of ending her is yours, my friend."

"As you wish," Vader said archly, and bowed before his master.

* * *

At the IMAg headquarters on Ukio, Ry Kyver stormed into Nathan Xeres' office and threw her black denim jacket down on an empty chair. Nathan, who had been trying to analyze data from his latest plant breeding experiment, looked up to see his boss and long-time friend with a grim expression on her face.

"What's eating you?" he said. "You look pale." _Sallow, more like it_ , he thought, _ever since she started that manic witch-hunt_. The pale of her face worried him. She hadn't lost her athletic build, but her natural complexion was much darker than what he saw now. And was it just his imagination, or did her eyes flash yellow now too?

Whatever the colour of her eyes, Ry glared at him and his concerned look. "There's still too many of them," she said.

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "I don't see why you're so worried about them. It's not like the Siluans can actually use the Force much."

"By simply being they draw the balance of the Force toward the Light. There can be no dominion of the Dark Side while they still exist. You should know that." She said this, but was also aware of a less esoteric motive for her crusade: destroying the Siluans would gain her far greater favour with the Emperor than the Imperial Agriculture Program alone ever could.

Nathan shrugged. "I think you underestimate the Dark Side of the Force," he said.

Ry flicked a little blue flash of electric current at him.

"Ouch!" Nathan yelled, and struck back in kind, but Ry deftly deflected it at the window, which broke.

"I understand the Dark Side very well, thank you," she said. "But anyways, I need an update on the Senate business."

Nathan sighed. Ry Kyver was not someone who made herself easy to work with. "The next phase of the Best Agricultural Practices legislation is set to go before the Senate tomorrow, and should be law by the end of the week," he said, "depending on how much ruckus Senator Organa decides to make."

"Oh, let the idiot filibuster. He won't stop us. Did you get that file I wanted from the archives?"

Nathan pulled a memory stick out of his breast pocket and threw it on the desk in front of Ry. "You're damn lucky the AgriCorps people on Deema had a backup data bunker, or that file would have been blasted into oblivion with the rest of the place."

Taking the memory stick, Ry smiled and fed it to the secretarial droid, who in turn projected a holographic image: a diminutive figure, lizard-like and wrapped in a long brown cloak. Ry shrieked with laughter.

"Oh, look at the little lizard-man! Good to see you again, _Master Lu_!" She stressed the name with mock respect. The droid proceeded to play the hologram.

" _I am here today to speak of those whom I consider our sisters in the ways of the Force,_ " said the hologram of Master Lu. " _I have been blessed to spend much of my life as a Jedi learning of, and learning from, those known as the Siluans. Today, as an introduction to their way of life, I will take you on a pictorial journey to a few of their monasteries, which I hope you too will one day have the privilege of visiting. If you will forgive my partiality, let us begin with the Paloma monastery on my home planet of Yemer..._ "

"Why, we'd love to visit the monastery on your home planet of Yemer!" Ry said, and cackled. "The fool! I only wish he could see what he's done to them."

* * *

"What's that smell?" Ry asked Nathan, as they stood amid the sagebrush and shimmering heat of the Yemerian badlands.

Nathan sniffed. There was, in fact, a rather pungent terpenoid aroma in the air.

"You're standing on it," he said, and pointed.

Ry stepped back to look at a clump of sunny little daisies with fuzzy grey leaves, several of which still stood erect despite her trampling their neighbours underfoot. She glared at them, then drew her red-bladed light-sabre. With a single stroke sheared off their many heads.

Soon a transport came into view in the dusty distance. When it came within five metres of where Ry and Nathan stood, it stopped and two stormtroopers stepped out and stood at attention. A second pair of stormtroopers opened the hold to reveal a number of people inside: mostly Yemerians, but there were also several humans, a few Twi'leks, two Togruttas and a young Rodian, all wearing monastic robes in various shades of green and brown and grey.

"Was that all you could find?" Ry asked the leading stormtrooper.

"Yes. We searched the entire monastery and the surrounding area."

"There's more," she said, "but we'll deal with them later. You may fire when ready."

The leading stormtrooper gave the order and the four opened fire, mowing down the twenty or so Siluans in the transport in about five seconds. Ry watched with dispassion. If she noticed that most of them died without crying out, she showed no sign of it.

"You may return to your base," Ry told the stormtroopers, then turned to Nathan. "Let's start spraying," she said.

"I'll dilute the tanks," he said, and turned toward the two massive spray rigs that stood nearby, but Ry caught him by the arm.

"You don't need to dilute the tanks," she said. "They're already at the right concentration."

Nathan looked narrowly at her. "At that concentration, a blend of Matrazine and Azopel will leave this place totally lifeless for years."

Ry looked at Nathan sideways. "Yeah...that's why we're doing it."

"But I thought the Senate..."

"The Senate isn't here."

"But I thought we agreed that..."

"The only thing worth extracting here is the phosphorus, and I've got contractor with droids to do that."

"But I thought..."

"I thought your job was to follow orders," Ry said, and folded her arms across her chest.

Ry and Nathan glared darts at each other, but Nathan was the first to look away.

"Curse you, Ry," he said and donned his respirator.

Ry watched him climb into the cockpit of one of the spray rigs, and waited for him to start his engine before she too put on her respirator and then boarded the second unit. She waited and watched Nathan take off first, and smiled as she saw the spray jets on his rig get into action. This was her creation, that fine mist of Matrazine and Azopel glinting gold as it caught the sunlight.

* * *

The sunset sky raged red and the air was tinged with the acrid tang of herbicide as Ry Kyver and Nathan Xeres walked through the experimental fields surrounding the IMAg headquarters on Ukio later that week.

"It's not good enough," Ry said. "We're a whole year behind schedule." They were examining the trial of Matrazine-resistant peas and lentils under development for the Imperial Agriculture Program.

"Our progress is well within the average for the development of a new transgenic crop," Nathan said. "There's only so much I can do to speed things up."

"I don't think you get it," Ry said. "In three years, we need to have Matrazine-resistant seeds available for farmers, or the Imperial Agriculture Program starts to fall apart. Your job's on the line as much as mine if that happens."

Nathan rolled his eyes. "Ry, you can't just hand me a bunch of plants from the lab and expect marketable crop seed overnight. The herbicide resistance genes you designed were solid enough, but against the genetic background of the pea and lentil strains we're working with, only three of the transgenic lines are anywhere near our crop performance targets. We can't put these seeds on the market if they aren't up to snuff. It's like you said, if farmers stop trusting us to give them stuff that works, _then_ the Imperial Ag Program falls apart."

"I'm aware of that," Ry snapped. "What I'm not aware of is why you and those lab techs are so damn slow with getting the final adjustments done."

"Look, if you were actually here a bit more, we might be a bit quicker at troubleshooting some of the problems we're having. A lot of this stuff is more your forte than mine."

"Are you saying you're not up to the job?"

"Blast it, Ry! We both have our part! You're getting all the credit for the Ag Program but it was my idea too. Yet you're traipsing all over the galaxy on this damn crusade of yours and I'm stuck here doing the actual work."

"The Emperor wants me to deal with the Siluans," Ry said matter-of-factly, as their field walk wound back around to the IMAg office block. They stopped and stood outside of it, facing each other in the dusk.

"Yeah, but it was still your idea," Nathan said. "Look, could you please, please just be around a bit more to help get things done around here?"

Ry was a little taller than Nathan, and drew herself up to full height so that she could look down on him while thinking of something cutting to say, but then she had an idea. "I'll tell you what," she said. "If you get back on board to help me deal with the Siluans, then I'll make sure be here to do my bit. Force technique and lab stuff, mind you, not field work."

Nathan rolled his eyes. " _And_ you'll make sure the Emperor knows I had my part in this too."

Ry shrugged. "Sure. Deal?"

"If that's what it takes," Nathan said.

"Well, come to the office then, and I can give you a list of locations to scout out," Ry said, and turned to go into the building.

"Look, just text it to me," Nathan said. "I got to run. I have a date tonight."

"That Twi'lek?" Ry sneered.

"No! I told you, Tifini's a Zabrak," Nathan said, and then wished he'd kept his mouth shut.

"I see you're taking a walk on the wild side," Ry said sarcastically.

A muscle twitched in Nathan's jaw. He had two choices, and only one would end well for both of them. Fists clenched at his sides, he turned to go.

Ry watched him walk away, and realized with a sudden ache that she wished she had someone – friend, lover, housemate, anyone – to spend the night with, but she quickly stuffed the feeling back into a black hole where it belonged. She had more important things to do!

The red sky turned to grey, and Ry was left standing outside the IMAg office block, listening to the hum the generator made when it was running low on reactant. She sent a quick text to the site manager to deal with the problem, and then headed inside to the clean counters and bright LED lights of the laboratories on the second floor.

The main laboratory she entered had its own hum: refrigerators, incubators, the fan on the fume hood where a lone lab tech worked late. Ry didn't bother going to say hello. She could have headed to that end of the lab to check on the tests Nathan wanted her help with, but instead she pulled out her key card and opened the door to the side-room where a special incubator housed the project the Emperor himself had asked her to undertake years ago.

The incubator, which looked more or less like a huge white chest freezer, sat at the far end of the room. Ry went to it and for a moment rested her hand on the edge of the smooth metal lid. A datapad above the incubator attested that this was iteration 133 of the experiment. She threw the lid open.

Inside sat a multi-layered grid of smooth, transparent petri dishes. Each was marked with the date, replicate number and species of the mass of cultured cells that grew on the smooth brown nutrient agar. For a minute and a half she held them in her gaze, probing them through the Force, then slammed the lid shut. Null results again! She turned to the computer at the laboratory bench near the door and brought up the latest quantitative DNA analysis results for this batch of cells. The mass of data, displayed in sharp little green letters on the black screen, only confirmed what she had sensed for herself: none of the cultured cell lines, whether plant or animal or bacteria or fungus, had sustained any lasting increase to its midi-chlorian levels.

Why the Emperor wanted cultured cell lines with enhanced Force sensitivity, he had not said, though Ry certainly had her own intentions for what to do with the results. If she got results. She went back to the incubator and threw the lid open again. All those smooth and shining petri-dishes, all those amorphous green and white and deep pink blobs of cultured cells, all were just another failed attempt in a long series of failed attempts to use any combination of Force technique or laboratory skill to get the results she and the Emperor wanted.

How could it be? How dare it be? She of all people, she, Ry Kyver, who could use the Force to perceive the design of new agro-chemicals and to create novel genes to modify crops, she of all people ought to be able to change the midi-chlorian count of a stupid cell culture. Yet all remained recalcitrant to her efforts. She glared at the smooth petri-dishes until, under the force of her gaze, several of them broke with a sudden _pop_ , sending a shards of plexiglass flying into her face.

Just then, her comm beeped. Seeing the caller ID, Ry quickly closed the door of the side-room in case the lab-tech was listening. Then, with the press of a button, she answered the call and Darth Vader stood before her, ever so slightly larger than life. It was only a hologram, streaked and grainy and slightly translucent, but she bowed to his metallic bulk and flowing cloak all the same.

"I've been trying to contact you. Where have you been?" he asked over the sound of his rasping breath.

Her lips curled in a proud smile. "I have discovered and destroyed the monasteries of Yemer and Terrapin. As soon as my business on Ukio is done, those on Cynar and Arum will follow. Few Siluans will remain when I'm done."

"Beyond those circles rises One whom you must destroy, lest that One unmake what you've accomplished."

"I'm aware of that," she snapped, but it was a lie. "And I will find that One, but it will take time. Finding an unknown Siluan is very difficult, even using the Force."

"Then you should be putting more time into the search."

"I would, but I can't exactly walk away from my responsibilities at the Ministry of Agriculture now, can I?"

"That is no excuse. If you fail to do this, the Emperor will not be pleased."

Her eyes narrowed. "I'm not going to fail," she said tersely.

"That remains to be seen."

Ry folded her arms across her chest and glared at him.

Vader allowed her to do this, he let her try to stare him down, as the sound of his breath reverberated in the air around her. He waited, until at last a muscle flinched under her left eye and she looked away. Only then did he end the transmission.


	19. The Return of a Jedi

**Welcome to chapter 19!**

First, an acknowledgement: while the general idea and some details about the Jedi AgriCorps come from the Star Wars Legends, I also borrowed from and built on the details in **An AgriCorps Mystery** by **dave . davies . 5851** (remove the spaces if you look him up). Many thanks for permission to use ideas from that work! Some of this borrowing is evident in Eo's objections to the AgriCorps mentioned in this chapter.

Second, about chronology: as we follow the still-separate threads of Eo, Devin and Ry, I've sometimes made time jumps both backwards and forwards as we switch chapters from one character to another. This was largely due to my organizing the story thematically and not only chronologically. With this chapter, we jump forward again to 14 BBY. I expect this to be the last big time jump. At some point, I'll try to go back and clean up time indicators on the earlier chapters. In the meantime, sorry for any confusion, and please do message me if some point needs clarification!

 **The Way of a Siluan**

 **Chapter 19: The Return of a Jedi**

14 BBY, year 5 of Imperial rule

Eo lifted her arms to the sky and closed her eyes and turned her face to the warmth of the morning sun. She took a deep breath. The air on her cheeks was still cool and moist but the sky promised a hot day. The sun had come up only just high enough over the tops of the trees to touch Eo's face, but the garden at her feet was still in shadow. She waited, eyes closed, feeling the expectant hum of everything around her.

Now! The sun rose higher above the tree line and touched the garden, and Eo felt the air around her surge with joy and power as the plants burst into song. Or so she felt it to be. No one had told her that this sort of Force-hearing was not uncommon for those Jedi of the AgriCorps who were trained to connect with plants, and so she didn't think of this in terms of the Force, only _the plants are singing._

Eo opened her eyes and let her arms fall to her sides. The force of the sun-power on the leaves of the plants was lifting the morning dew off in a cloud of gold vapour. With a glow of pride Eo realized that the garden had changed for her, or that she had changed for the garden. It was almost five years and more than a full round of the planet's seasons since she arrived on Hokto. When she first came garden had seemed no more than a big green tangle, but now – after thousands of hours of planting and weeding and watering, and day after day of harvesting and eating – she knew these plants. The colourful _brakka_ and _chadris_ whose leaves she'd harvested all winter sported tall flower stalks now, gone to seed with the warm summer days. The frilly pink-flowered plant she'd seen on her first day in the garden bore five-sided seed pods; those were starpeas (which weren't really peas at all), and _yima,_ the tubers she and Varda had planted back in that first spring, were popping up here and there with feathery purple leaves. And among them all rambled a fuzzy vine with big flat leaves; that was _maramelo._

 _Maramelo_ was her favourite. The little yellow gourds it produced were full of dark green hull-less seeds, one of the few truly high-protein and high-energy foods to be had on Hokto. At nearly seventeen, Eo was still skinny and small for her age, and badly needed every calorie and every amino acid she could get. The thought of _maramelo_ made her mouth water. She watched the broad-leafed vines twining around themselves, trying to climb higher to get more light but falling back down under their own weight. They'd grow better, and produce more, she thought, if they didn't ramble all over the ground like that.

She knew what she would do: she would go and cut down some of the tall straight branches from the shrubs that grew near the lakeside, and make a trellis so that she could train the plants upright. She could see it: the fuzzy green vines climbing up the trellis with big gold flowers and yellow fruits hanging down. They would be beautiful, just like a flowering vine she's seem growing on a trellis in a container garden on a portico of the Jedi Temple, overlooking the Coruscant cityscape. She turned to toward the hut to go get her knife.

"Eo!" Varda called, appearing from another corner of the garden.

Eo's heart sank. She had a feeling she knew what was coming. "Yes?"

"I checked the debris field with the telescope last night. I think the gap will be open again in three lunar cycles. You need to bring Ava Yen's navigational droid to finish the starship."

Eo stared at Varda blankly for moment. Varda reminding her that the gap in the debris field was going to open and that she'd have to leave was nothing new, but it was a while since Varda had said anything about the droid. "I'm not sure about that droid," Eo said. "It's kind of batty."

"Can you fly the ship?" Varda asked pointedly.

"No, I can't."

"And I am staying here, so I suggest you get that droid."

"Now?" Eo's voice sounded more like fourteen than seventeen.

"If it isn't working I'll need time to fix it."

Eo sighed and looked at Varda standing there in her green sari with a firm look on her face. The image of the trellis Eo wanted to make stood vividly in her mind, and she was very much inclined to think that the droid could wait. But she saw a change in Varda now. It had come gradually, and Eo was only just now realizing it: Varda's face was wrinkled more than it ever had been, and her hair was grey streaked with black instead of black streaked with grey. She looked tired. For all Varda's sternness and sarcasm, Eo suddenly felt a pit of sadness in her stomach at the thought that in a little while, she would have to leave Varda behind.

Eo sometimes wondered why the Jedi speak so little about love. _The Sayings of Ava Shio_ were full of things like: _In this you will find Light, to love all as being your very self._ But in the Jedi Order, what stuck out to her was the obedience of padawan to master, and the deep bonds that often formed between them. Eo would never be a padawan, but Varda was, in some sense, her Jedi master. Perhaps to obey was one way to love.

Eo was very much inclined to think the droid could wait another day, but to be fair, so could her trellis. She stamped the image of the trellis into her mind so that she could come back to it later.

"Alright, I'll be back later," Eo said to Varda, and turned to go get the boat.

Varda watched Eo trot off into the forest in the direction of the lake. _This one is special,_ she thought. _But why did she come to me?_

# # #

On the far side of the lake, Eo pushed through the forest underbrush that had grown up over the path she'd worn to the shipwreck. She hadn't actually been to the wreck since early spring, when she'd finally finished making Varda's starship ready to fly. When she arrived with scratched-up arms and a twig in her hair at the clearing where the wreck stood, she found that it, too, was more overgrown than ever. Over the coat of moss and lichen that it had worn all winter, orange-flowered vines rambled and criss-crossed so thickly that she could barely see the hull. The nav-droid, however, sat on top of the ship, defiantly poking up from under the vines.

Eo had come for that droid, and wanted to get it to Varda's starship quickly enough to still have time before dinner for what she wanted to do in the garden, but there was one thing she needed to do first. It was her ritual every time she had to go to the wreck, but it was doubly important now that she would be leaving soon. Eo waded through the ferns that had grown up around the ship and found her way to the mound of stones on Ava Yen's grave.

The stones too were covered in shaggy mosses and frilly lichens now, dappled by the sun-patches where light reached down through the thick forest canopy. Eo stood quietly to feel the life-hum of the forest around her, and to remember.

It wasn't just that Ava Yen had brought dignity to the shame of her being assigned to the AgriCorps. _At first I was scared to touch a dead body, but I now feel peace, I feel alive!_ she had told Varda as they laid those flat grey stones on his grave. That feeling was part of something she wasn't sure how to name, much less explain why she wanted it, but that something was wrapped up in the life-song of the forest and the garden, in the way she felt when she read _The Sayings of Ava Shio_ and in the sense of Light she'd experienced as a child in the Jedi Temple. It was something she wanted the way she wanted to warm herself over the fire when she was cold or to dip into the lake when she was too hot.

That something – it must, she thought, be the Light of the Force, though it went beyond what she'd learned in the Temple – Ava Yen had showed her that she didn't need to be a Jedi Knight in order to find it. _It is often that way with the death of a Siluan,_ Varda had told her. _They believe that when a person dies, the energy they cultivated within them is released. If a person has cultivated Light within them, their energy can bring life and peace_. Eo bowed with one hand over her heart, reaching down with the other to touch the cool mossy stones on his grave.

As she stood up again, Eo noticed that the sun-patches had moved nearly a handbreadth since she'd been there. She looked over at the droid on top of the starship. She didn't like CX24, but it was, after all, Ava Yen's droid. If he had left her with that sense of aliveness that she carried with her now, and if the cloth bag and the digital file reader he'd left behind had given her _The Sayings of Ava Shio_ – perhaps the droid had something to teach her too. With one last bow toward the grave, Eo turned to the shipwreck.

The near side of the shipwreck offered a series of foot- and hand-holds for climbing up to the top, but little black-and-yellow wasps were flying in and out of a huge papery nest they'd built there, so Eo went around to the far side. The vines, she was glad to find, were old and thick and tough enough for her to scramble up through their scratchy leaves. On top of the ship, she pulled the younger, more tender vines away from the nav-droid and undid the heavy clips that held it in place.

As Eo pressed the lichen-covered power buttom on top of the droid's head to turn it on, it occurred to her to wonder whether the long winter out in the rain might have rendered the droid non-functional, but CX24 lit up, beeped and whirred to life.

"Communication," Eo said firmly, remembering the last time.

"To lock in voice response, say 'voice.' For analog mode, say 'analog,'" the droid said in a slow and scratchy mechanical voice.

"VOICE."

"I am CX24, advanced navigational assistant. How can I help you?"

"Please come with me," Eo said. "We're going to the other starship."

CX24 made a mechanical _tsk tsk tsk_ , then said, "Request requires mobility options. Mobility options are currently unavailable."

"Please," Eo said gently, "we need you to fly the starship."

"That does not compute," the droid said. "For navigational assistance, say 'navigation.' For data access, say 'data.' For communication options, say 'communication.' For advanced options, say 'advanced options.'"

"Advanced options," Eo said quickly, hoping to find she knew not what to help her.

"For manual override, say 'manual override.' To select alternative algorithms for hyperspace jump calculation, say 'alternate algorithms.' To recalibrate galactic positioning system, say 'recalibrate GPS.'"

The first sounded hopeful. "Manual override," Eo said.

"You are not authorized to make that selection. For navigational assistance, say..."

Through a hole the droid was wearing in her patience, Eo glimpsed an idea. Without waiting to hear any more, she pressed the power button on top of CX24's head, and after a final sputtering the droid went silent. Then she steadied herself on top of the ship, carefully bent her knees to spare her back, and with her arms around the droid, lifted it out of its socket.

With the weight of the droid bearing down on her arms and shoulders, Eo realized that her plan was only half-baked at best: she hadn't counted on not being able to see her feet. With her first step, her foot caught a vine and she tripped.

Nine years of childhood Jedi training were not wholly lost on Eo. Without quite knowing how she did it, Eo managed to turn the three-metre fall into a roll and found herself lying on the damp forest floor, staring at ground level into the cool forest of ferns that grew beneath the tree canopy, surprised at the stillness after the first shock of relocation had passed. Slowly she rotated her ankles, then her wrists, and then satisfied that nothing was injured, she got up, dusted herself off, and looked around for the nav-droid.

There was mechanical squawk a few metres away. Eo pulled aside a clump of ferns to find CX24 upside down, flailing obviously functional ambulatory struts and firing a posterior jet pack in a fruitless attempt to right itself.

Eo's resolve to be open to learning something from Ava Yen's droid sufficed to keep her from getting angry that mobility options evidently were, in fact, available, but the sight of the cranky little droid bottoms up, helplessly trying to right itself was quite unexpected. Without thinking, Eo clapped a hand over her mouth and giggled.

The droid let loose a string of angry, unintelligible droidal jibberish.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Eo said quickly, doing her best to sound contrite. She helped the droid to its feet, but for CX24 she had already gone too far. Nothing Eo tried thereafter would induce the droid to either shut down or shut up.

For a moment, Eo thought of just leaving CX24 there in the forest to natter away until it ran out of power, but she didn't want to find out what Varda would say if she came back without it. So after hoisting the droid up on one shoulder, she staggered with it back to the lake.

The boat rode dangerously low in the water under the weight of the nav-droid, and as Eo struggled to paddle her unwilling passenger across the lake progress was slow at best. The boat jerked and tipped and lurched because despite the droid's square, stocky and unbendable frame, CX24 insisted on leaning back and forth to try to look down into the water. They nearly capsized several times before Eo lost her temper and swatted the droid upside the head with her paddle, after which CX24 flopped down in the bottom of the boat and made a whimpering _meep meep meep_ for the rest of the trip.

By the time Eo had wrestled CX24 into Varda's ship, her head ached from the noonday sun beating down on her black hair out on the shadeless lake. She felt wretched for having hit the droid and angry with herself for not having found a better way, yet also angry that CX24 hadn't given her much in the way of options. Any thought of learning something from Ava Yen's nav-droid was long gone.

When Eo connected the droid to the starship's computer, CX24 refused, of course, to run the programming required to connect to the ship's navigation system. But CX24 did allow her access, via the computer, to a seemingly random list of files carried in its memory bank, and when Eo saw what files were in the list, she went running back to the house.

"Varda! Varda! Varda!" she shrieked as she ran into the hut, where Varda was stirring a pot of soup for dinner.

"Eo, what in the galaxy are you shouting about?"

"The nav-droid, CX24, it has the complete text of _The Way of a Siluan_! The whole thing, it's on there."

Varda looked impressed, but her voice was stern. "It's a pity you didn't find that earlier. Copy it to your file reader and bring it back."

"Yes, yes, that's what I came for," Eo said, and grabbing the bag with the file reader, ran back out.

# # #

After dinner, when the dishes were cleared away, Varda and Eo sat on the big reed mat on the dirt floor of the hut with a basket of starpeas to shell for tomorrow's breakfast. Varda lit the lamp and Eo brought out the digital file reader. She had left it out in the sun all afternoon, solar panel side up, to charge the failing battery, and it still felt warm in her hands as she read aloud from the text she'd found in CX24's memory bank.

 _Though I may die, yet shall the Light be unbroken._

 _Though malice and malady wither all green, yet shall the Light be unbroken._

 _Though night of a thousand millenia swallow all into darkness, yet shall the Light be unbroken._

 _For the Light is before all, the Light creates all, and when all has been, yet shall the Light be._

 _You seek the Light? Why do you fear? What you seek no one can take from you, what you desire no one can drive from you._

 _Seek the Light, but know that we do not yet know the true Light. A day will come when the Light shall dawn for us. Until that day, let us walk in peace._

 _This concludes the first discourse of Ava Yelena._

Eo voice quavered a bit as she read. When she finished, she sat silent for a moment as the sound of Varda shelling starpeas into a metal bowl marked the time.

Eo's thoughts moved in wordless paths. Reading the sacred Siluan text felt like eating when she was hungry and drinking when she was thirsty, but it wasn't a feeling she could put into words. She reached out and grabbed a handful of starpea pods and a metal bowl, and sat quietly for a long time, feeling the rough five-sided pods crack under her fingers and watching the round white seeds drop into the bowl.

Varda, for whom reading the text was an exercise in Eo's education and not her own, was not specially moved by the words Eo had read aloud, but considered whether she might have any commentary to offer for Eo's benefit. After cracking open a few pods and letting the starpeas fall with a _plink_ into the metal bowl, she decided to wait to see what Eo might say first, if anything.

"Who was Ava Yelena?" Eo asked at length.

"She was one of the Twi'lek Siluans who left Ryloth to settle on the planet Yalith, here in the Hokto system three millenia ago. The Siluans revere her teachings on non-violence and love even for one's enemies, but I question whether many of them have any real concept of what that means. It's one thing to like those sorts of ideas from the quiet of your garden, and quite another to practice them when your enemy is staring you in the face."

Eo looked over at Varda, intrigued. "What happened to her?"

"Sith came to Yalith in those days. There were hundreds of them before they had their Rule of Two."

Eo looked somewhat alarmed. "Did they kill her?"

"Eventually," Varda said in a matter-of-fact tone, "but perhaps it was harder for her to first see the darkness of those days. Her planet was green once, but now Yalith is just another rock, Hokto System Planetary Object 743 is all the astro-geographers call it now."

"But then how did anyone find her writings?"

"Strictly speaking, Ava Yelena didn't write anything. She was a medic, and a herbalist. When the Sith had all but destroyed the planet they turned to civil war. When she found their wounded she would try to tend them, the crazy woman. Most of them died anyways, but one lived and became her disciple, Ava Mannath. He transcribed her teachings and brought them with him to Yemer when the Jedi finally arrived and helped him escape."

Eo tiled her head to one side the way she sometimes did when she was thinking. It was a strange story, she felt, sad and beautiful and harsh. It reminded her of a story she'd heard in the Jedi Temple, but she couldn't remember now who the story was about. "I remember you said there are a lot of Siluans in Yemer," she said, not sure how to put her other thoughts into words.

"Yes!" Varda said fondly. "That was where I got to know the Siluans. I was sent to Yemer to mediate a dispute, but I fell ill and stayed several days in the hospital at the Paloma monastery. You might consider joining the Paloma monastery, after you finish serving with the AgriCorps."

"Maybe I could just go straight to the monastery. I don't want to serve in the AgriCorps." What Eo had heard of the AgriCorps was drudgery and isolation: walking through row after row of the same crop for hours and hours, trying to use the Force to aid their growth, serving alone in some remote outpost. She'd heard more than one story of AgriCorps Jedi severely depressed after a few months of this.

Though Eo did not voice these objections, Varda knew them. They'd talked about this before. "You aren't going to just any AgriCorps station," Varda said firmly. "You're going to Deema. Things are different on Deema; my friend Lu Mang is there."

Eo scowled down at at the floor. She'd heard enough about Master Lu to trust that he might do things differently, but the AgriCorps still meant delaying what she'd rather do, and it meant the dishonour of being a Jedi without being a Jedi knight. "I'd rather just find a Siluan elder to train me right away," Eo said, and showed her feelings in the force with which she cracked open her last pod of starpeas.

Varda gave Eo a sharp look. "If you do, they will remind you that the Jedi raised you from your infancy and ask you to finish serving with the AgriCorps until you are old enough to take your monastic vows. To become a Siluan, you will need to find peace even in doing what you dislike. So please be careful: if you go to Deema but resent it, it could twist you more than you expect. I don't want you to end up like me."

Eo looked over at Varda in utter surprise, but Varda shook her head at this. "You are old enough now to face reality for what it is. I've wrecked my whole life with resentment. But that is what it is. From the beginning, I didn't really want to be a Jedi Knight."

"But Varda! You're a wonderful Jedi!" Eo protested quickly.

"You say that because you are young and inexperienced. The truth is that when I was growing up in the Temple I longed to go into the AgriCorps, to serve alongside the Jedi who brought me to the Temple when I was a child. But when the time came the Council said I was too strong in the Force to be wasted on the AgriCorps, and assigned me to be a padawan with a Jedi master.

"I obeyed, but for a long time a shadow lay on me, and I became angry, not for myself only, but for my peers, and later for the younglings I taught in the Temple. Too many of them who were assigned to the AgriCorps lost their way as Jedi because they grew up thinking that being a Jedi only means being a Jedi _knight._ So I fought the Council to elevate the role of agriculture in Jedi education, but they wouldn't listen. 'We are raising guardians of peace and justice, not farmers,' they told me, and when I persisted they threatened to revoke my seat on the Council. So I went silent, but perhaps now you can see why I came to resent the Jedi Order altogether.

"Perhaps I should have been like my friend Lu Mang. He wanted to see the same changes as I did but he had the patience to seem as if he wasn't getting what he wanted, and yet in his own quiet way he accomplished more for the benefit of the AgriCorps than I ever did. But what's past is past, and here I am now."

Eo sat transfixed. In all the time she'd spent on Hokto, Varda had never told Eo even half this much about her past. "So...that's why you came here?" Eo asked cautiously, hoping almost against hope that Varda would be willing to say more, but for awhile Varda didn't answer, and there was only the sound of shells cracking and peas dropping into two metal bowls.

When Eo had almost given up on getting an answer, Varda sighed, not at Eo but to herself. "It is and it isn't," she said. "Some of the ancient Jedi masters taught that to resort to violence at all is at best to walk the line between Light and Dark. So the Jedi must have the wisdom to take up the sword only when all else fails and the strength not to be given over to the Dark Side of the Force when they do. But sometimes we fail. I only served a year in the Clone Wars but it was very hard for me. The more I fought the more I felt the Dark Side of the Force grow stronger in me. I suppose I was weak already with my resentment – and I certainly did not go to the war without grumbling – but one day I lost my composure and killed two of the clones who served under me when they made a mistake. Then I knew I had to leave. So I told no one, and came here."

Eo's face, always an open book, showed a mix of shock and sadness.

Varda saw this, but her expression didn't soften, and the unsteady lamplight sent shadows flickering across her face. "So perhaps it is just as well for you to have been assigned to the AgriCorps," she said. "It's hard to be the Knight of an Order that has lost its way."

Eo nodded slowly, trying to get her mind around this new idea.

"You have chosen a hard path too," Varda said. "The Siluans aren't tasked with being guardians of so-called peace and justice, rather simply to 'acquire Light within' as they say. But that is no small thing. They must find the strength to face evil, when it finds them, without any recourse to either hate or violence. That is why they say _though I may die, yet shall the Light be unbroken_ , so that they can face loss and even death with peace."

"That is very difficult," said Eo.

"I told you it was hard," Varda said flatly. "Do you still want to be a Siluan?"

Eo's skinny shoulders slumped as she felt the weight of the question settle over her. She tried to imagine what she would do if some monster, Sith or otherwise, came to destroy Hokto, as the Sith had destroyed Ava Yelena's planet. Eo knew she was no good with a light-sabre, but the image of the beautiful forest and garden on Hokto being slashed and burned while she hid for dear life made her think with relish of shooting blasters and throwing bombs and commandeering proton torpedos – and then she felt sad. Perhaps Varda was right: it was one thing to like teachings about nonviolence and compassion and unconquerable Light, but quite another to actually practice them.

"I want to try," Eo said, looking troubled. But then, buoyed by another thought, she shook herself. "Anyways, the challenge of being a Jedi is not so different, I think. They can't just lash out and give themselves up to anger and hatred when they're fighting some kind of evil. They still need to face their enemies with compassion, and act without vengeance."

Varda shook her head and sighed, sounding somewhat exasperated. "Eo, one day you will have to face the fact that the way of a Siluan and the way of a Jedi are very different paths. You won't always be able to hold the two together." As Varda spoke, she got up and poured the two bowls of shelled starpeas into a pot for tomorrow's breakfast, then scraped together the few brown pods that had scattered from the main pile. _Time to go to bed_ , she thought.

A cloud passed over Eo's face as she sat thinking. "I think they aren't so different," she said, more confidently than she normally sounded when she dared to contradict Varda. "They both ask you to love something more than you love yourself." She looked up at Varda as if to ask her thoughts on this, but Varda turned her face away and didn't answer.

When Eo woke the next morning, she didn't see Varda at her usual place by the stove. Stepping out into the cool before dawn, Eo followed the voice of the tree-frogs through the garden and down to the shores of the lake. Varda was there, and in her hand a blade of brilliant light wheeled and flashed as her body flowed through a series of motions, first quick and beautiful, then slow and fearsome, like a dance and unlike dance. Eo barely breathed as she stood stone-still, watching wide-eyed.

But then Varda caught Eo's eye, and extinguished the light-sabre. Shrinking back into her usual self, she came and stood in front of Eo, who at seventeen was now a head taller than Varda. They stood for a moment facing each other, in awe of the moment that had been, and awkward at its discovery. Varda was the first to speak.

"How can I teach you if I'm not willing to learn? Long ago I turned from the way of the Jedi, but from today I will walk again in it."

"I'm happy for you, Varda" Eo said, her eyes shining.

"Happy? We shall see. But I'm very glad that you are here with me," Varda said, and bowed to her apprentice.


	20. Departure

**Welcome to chapter 20!** I usually find that my experience of a book or a TV series is influenced by knowing how far along I am in it, so I just thought I'd let you know what to expect from this story. What you've been reading is Part I of a two-part story. Part I will be wrapping up in chapter 24, after which I plan to take an extended break from posting while I work on Part II.

My apologies for the long intervals between posting chapters. Farm work is really busy right now, so it will probably continue to be 3-4 weeks between chapters. Thanks for reading!

 **The Way of a Siluan, Chapter 20: Departure**

BBY 14, year five of Imperial rule

"Eo, Eo!" Varda called from the door of the hut. She shaded her eyes with one hand and looked out over the tangle of the garden in the mid-morning sun. _Where is she_? "Eo!"

"I'm here!" Eo's voice came from the far side of the garden.

Varda hobbled out of the hut and along the narrow path through the tangled garden. Her hip had been sore for no apparent reason for weeks, and she hoped Eo would be the one to walk down to the lake to get some watercress to go with lunch. It was late summer, and with the warm, dry weather the garden bore only fruiting crops; no greens except what they could glean by the lakeside.

As Varda headed in the direction of Eo's voice, it struck her as odd: with her return to Jedi practice, she ought, at this distance, to be able to sense some kind of Force-signature to tell her where Eo was, but she couldn't. "Eo?" she called again.

"I'm here!" Eo said, and suddenly Varda found Eo standing beside her, brushing her hair out of her face with dirty fingers.

Varda looked at her blankly for a moment. "I couldn't find you," she said. It wasn't an accusation, just confusion. She could sense Eo's Force-signature well enough now that she was looking at her.

Eo tilted her head to one side, confused. "But I was just here," she said. "I wanted to take care of the _maramelo_ that I planted last week." Eo gestured to the patch of garden where she'd been working.

Varda followed Eo's gesture to the three-metre-long trellis, carefully constructed from long straight branches freshly cut, on which Eo had been training a row of velvety green _maramelo_ vines.

"These ones are doing well," Varda said. They were rather lush and vigorous for only a week old.

Eo nodded. "I was thinking about what you said in the winter, about how the mycorrhizae feed the forest. So I gave the _maramelo_ some mycelia I found in the soil where the vines grow around the wreck of Ava Yen's starship."

Varda bent down and touched the fuzzy young plants and touched the soil. There was indeed in the Force-signature of both the plant and soil-borne fungus something highly synchronized, each calling and answering to the other perfectly.

"But how did you know to choose that fungus as a mycorrhizal partner for them?" It certainly wasn't the same species Varda and Eo had looked at together back in the winter.

Eo shrugged and looked down at her toes. "I just thought it would be worth trying."

Varda looked at the plants carefully. Her Force-sense told her that in the exchange between plant and fungus there was something too well harmonized, too resonant for a mere guess to be a likely explanation for this symbiosis of a native fungus and a plant that Varda had brought with her from another planet.

"But how did you know?" Varda pressed her. "Please just say what you think," she added when Eo hesitated to answer. "It doesn't have to be right or wrong."

Eo bent down and continued to twine the little vines around the slender stakes of the trellis. "They sang the same song," she said at last, "or at least, the songs they sang fit together."

Eo wasn't looking at her, so Varda did not restrain herself from showing an expression of utter astonishment. She had never thought of Eo as being particularly adept at using the Force; she was certainly all but useless at telekinesis. But what Eo had just expressed – albeit in rather unconventional terms – showed an awareness of the Force that not all Jedi experience in plants and fungi. _Could it be?_ Varda wondered. _Lu Mang said some of the AgriCorps Jedi are like that, late-bloomers, but skilled in ways that we don't expect._

But Varda was not about to spoil her apprentice with praise. "This is good," she said, almost sternly. "You are learning to pay attention."

Eo nodded, absorbed in her work.

Varda sensed a quiet focus in Eo's Force-signature, and deep happiness. She still wanted that watercress for lunch, but hated now to take Eo from her work. _It won't hurt an old lady to take a walk to the lake,_ she thought. _It might even do me good._

"Anyways," Varda said brusquely, "I'm going to the lake for some watercress. We'll have lunch when I get back."

"Don't you want me to go get it?" Eo asked, looking up from her work.

"No, no, please stay here," Varda said, already hobbling off toward the path through the forest.

Eo watched her walk away _stump-step, stump-step_ , favouring one leg, and couldn't help but worry about her. Varda still insisted that she would stay behind alone on Hokto when the gap in the debris field opened and it came time for Eo to leave for the AgriCorps station on Deema.

###

The bad leg had developed gradually over the last couple lunar cycles. It certainly made the short walk to the lake somewhat cumbersome, but Varda felt good to be in the forest. Hearing the dry rustle of the breeze in the late-summer leaves, she looked up into the dappled green of the forest canopy. _How much solar energy does the forest capture in a day?_ Varda wondered. _There is power here, quiet power. Perhaps Eo is like that: not a Jedi Knight but powerful in her own quiet way._ She took a deep breath of the resinous forest air. She could see the lake now, glinting through the trees.

Though it was shady in the forest, the air beneath the trees held a gentle warmth. Yet as Varda neared the lake she found herself shivering, then looking down through the trees, she froze: two men stood beside the lake, one older, one younger, and an amphibious starship perched on the shore. The younger man, the shorter of the two, was in civilian clothes, but the older man wore a dark blue uniform bearing a crest she didn't recognize: a white wheel with six rectangular gear-teeth, inside a black wheel with shallower gear-teeth of the same number, connected by straight dark lines to the inner rim of a dark circle. Seeing the two men, Varda stopped and made herself perfectly still, like a rabbit in hiding, and with hearing beyond hearing, she listened.

"Have you found anything?" the older man asked.

"No, it's the blasted tree-frogs! The way they use the Force masks the energy field of other beings."

The older man burst out laughing. "Force-sensitive tree frogs? What kind of weed have you guys been smoking there at IMAg?"

The younger man scowled. "Well, has the scanner picked up anything?" he snapped.

"Tree-frogs," the older man said sheepishly. "I can scan again if you want."

Varda looked cautiously back toward the garden. She could just barely see Eo there, singing quietly to the plants as she worked. Those men must not under any circumstances, Varda felt, be allowed to find Eo.

Varda drew her light-sabre but didn't ignite it. She studied its smooth, gleaming hilt for a moment, feeling its weight in her hand. How many of them were there? Even if only those two, even if she could take them both down... _to strike first is not the way of the Jedi_ , she thought. And what if she failed, only alerting them to her presence? Looking back again at Eo, she put the un-ignited light-sabre away in the folds of her sari. Instead, taking a deep breath, Varda drew herself up to full height and began a gentle outward motion with her hands.

" _You don't need to scan again_ ," she said softly.

"You don't need to scan again," the younger man said.

" _Just get out of here_."

"Let's just get out of here."

The older man raised an eyebrow. "Don't you want to spray first?"

" _Never mind about that. You have better things to do_."

"Never mind about that. I've got better things to do."

The older man shook his head. "It's your head not mine if the Witch doesn't like it."

" _Never mind her!_ "

The younger man threw his hands up in the air. "Oh, screw Kyver for once. I've had it with this damn crusade of hers. We're never going to track down that One she's so bent on finding anyways."

"Well, Mr. Xeres, you're the boss. Like I said, it's your head not mine."

" _You're leaving now._ "

"Anyways, we're leaving now, so get your crew back to the ship."

"Yes, sir!" the older man said, half sarcastic.

The younger man boarded the starship. The older man pulled out his comm-link. "404, this is 712. Departure in five...yes, you heard that right. Boss' orders. Get your butts back to the ship before it leaves!"

Varda watched quietly as the scanning crew returned and boarded the starship. She watched with Jedi dispassion as it lifted off and disappeared into the blue sky. It was too bright a day to see the flash that signalled its leap to hyperspace, but she waited until both sight and Force-sense of it were gone, then all but ran as fast as she could with her bad leg, not back to the garden but to her own starship, her mind exploding in a thousand directions.

At the starship, Varda turned on the main computer, and while it took its time booting up, she paced back and forth, knocking her fists against her skull. "I should have checked, I should have checked!" she said over and over until the monitor was finally ready to display. She quickly pulled up the images she had programmed the telescope to collect. Flipping through them chronologically, she bit her lip: not only was the gap in the debris field open, it was well past its peak opening. It would be open, she predicted, to a good pilot for another week, and to a hotshot pilot for another month, but for a ship flown solely by Ava Yen's primitive little nav-droid, it was open today and today only.

Cursing herself, Varda paced up and down again. _How did this happen? Why didn't I check?_ She went back in her memories; the last time she'd checked was the day Eo brought the droid from Ava Yen's starship. Varda had checked the droid over, found no problems, and had none of the trouble Eo claimed to have had getting the droid to connect to her ship's computer. Satisfied with the nav-droid, she had programmed the telescope to collect images of the debris field each night so that she could check that her three-lunar-cycle prediction was on track. Only now the debris field was open in not three, but two lunar cycles, about twenty days earlier than she'd predicted.

 _Why didn't I check?_ She demanded of herself again. Since that day of setting up the droid, and her decision to return to Jedi practice, the days had slipped by in the timeless warmth of summer. Daily meditation, solitary light-sabre practice each dawn, reading from _The Way of a Siluan_ with Eo each night, Varda had felt too well, too grounded, too...too happy to think about the debris field opening and the inevitable loss of Eo that it would mean. _That was the problem, I was too happy!_ Varda thought and cursed herself again. But there was nothing for it. Either Eo had to leave today, or she had to wait three to five years before the debris field might open again. With that thought Varda shook herself and hurried out of the starship, not bothering to turn the computer off to save precious battery power. Eo would be leaving within the hour anyways.

Varda cursed her slowness and her sore leg as she stumbled back along the forest path, never minding the soft voice of the green leaves now. But when she came to the place in the path where she had seen the men by the shore, a barrage of thoughts stopped her in her tracks: _Who were those men? And what was that crest on the older man's uniform? Who is "the Witch"? Are they really gone? What if it isn't safe for Eo to leave?_

These thoughts were more unsettling than the knowledge that she'd nearly missed the opening of the debris field altogether. The debris field had kept the outside world out as much as it had kept Eo from leaving the planet, yet today someone had purposely, intentionally come there looking for something, or someone. There was no reason Varda could see for the men's search to have anything to do with her or with Eo, but it troubled Varda that the younger man had brought with him a feel of the Dark Side of the Force; Varda had sensed it even before she saw him. That struck her as odd now: she hadn't been able to sense Eo through the Force before seeing her in the garden, yet she had sensed at least a shiver of the Dark Side from the unexpected visitor before she saw him.

Varda stopped in a clearing to get a view of the sky, hoping to sense something of the galaxy through it. What was happening out there now? she wondered. The war must be over by now, she thought, or was it? That crest the older man bore was neither that of the Separatists nor of the Republic. Was it some corporation, or? And who was "the Witch," the one the younger man called Kyver? Some Darksider, it would seem, but of how much power? These questions raced through Varda's mind, yet as much as she searched the sky, she could get no sense of what danger did or didn't lie beyond the planet's atmosphere. It was as if not only the debris field but some invisible Force-wall hemmed them in, blocking the galaxy from view.

 _Is it safe for Eo to leave here_? Varda forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply, to centre herself, to regain some measure of Jedi dispassion. She searched within herself now also, and still she could find no answer to that question, only a deepening conviction that Eo must leave and must leave now, or some vital thing would not be.

 _But is it safe?_ Varda shook her head at herself. She wanted to trust that Force-sense that said that Eo must go and must go now, but she needed something more, and turned to logic to find it. Through hard logic, the choice was a simple binary: either Eo would leave now, doing her best to avoid danger, or she would wait perhaps another five years, when the danger might be less, but also might be greater.

Varda hardened her mind, forcing her thoughts along straight paths of logic. What actual danger was there in leaving now? The danger that the starship would be spotted and targeted, either by those men if they hadn't yet left the Hokto system, or by other hostiles while transitioning in and out of hyperspace along the multi-legged path to Deema. _How likely is it for the starship to attract notice?_ Varda asked herself. The ship's cloaking device would screen it from radar, if not from biological vision, and it was a standard passenger model, unlikely to be identified as a Jedi target by the Separatists. The route she had chosen – she reviewed it quickly in her mind – used only remote and little-travelled locations for hyperspace transitions so that Eo's journey would go unnoticed. And while Eo was in hyperspace, Varda reassured herself, no one could track her, and once on Deema the Jedi there would care for her. With the matter mostly settled in her mind, Varda pressed on again to find Eo.

As Varda came to the edge of the garden, the pain in her leg forced her to stop, bent over and gasping for breath. When she looked up, she saw Eo, now harvesting _starpeas_ into a basket slung over her shoulder, and making room for new growth by snapping off the old branches of the _starpea_ bushes with quick, deft movements of her hands. When Eo first came to Hokto five years ago she was very much a girl, but now Varda saw a young woman, stunted by the spartan diet of subsistence life yet beginning to show a woman's curves in her skinny frame.

A weight of sadness settled over Varda. What would life be on Hokto without Eo? When Varda came to the planet she felt too dead to the Force to care if life was mere existence, but now it was hard to bear the thought of losing the person who shared her morning and evening meals, who joined her in her garden work and daily meditation, who had shown her the way back to her path as a Jedi. _I don't want her to go_...Varda thought with a sudden ache. Yet there was so much that Varda knew she couldn't teach Eo: about using the Force to work with plants and fungi, and about the full practice of Siluan life. To hold back a young woman who was beginning to show so much promise would be like trying to catch a dragonfly and only succeeding to crush it. _It's not for her to be stuck here with an old hermit like me_ , Varda told herself. _Attachment is not the way of the Jedi._ With that thought, Varda hobbled into the garden to stand beside Eo.

Eo looked up from her work as Varda came and stood beside her. "What's wrong?" she asked, seeing the look on Varda's face.

"The gap in the debris field is open," Varda said quietly.

Eo looked at Varda wide-eyed for a moment. "But it's only been two lunar cycles..."

"I know," Varda said, "I thought it would be three, but I checked the telescope images and the gap is already on the far side of open. You'll have to leave now to get through safely. But there was one other thing: with the gap open, a starship came here. There was a man with a crew of some kind. They're gone now, but the man in charge had something of the Dark Side about him. I've tried and tried to understand, but I can't seem to see anything through the Force of what's happening beyond our atmosphere." Varda sighed. At least she could offer Eo a choice. "If you feel unsafe to leave, I won't force you to go."

Looking troubled, Eo took a deep breath and looked at the ground for a moment, weighing this information. "What do you think, is it too dangerous?" she asked, looking up at Varda again.

Varda shook her head. "I can't say for sure. I think that if you use the cloaking device until you make your first leap to hyperspace, it's no more dangerous now than it will be at any other time. If you don't go now, it might be three or even five years before you have another chance."

Eo nodded slowly. It was sad for her to leave Hokto and the forest and the garden she'd come to know there, but her mind was set on completing her training as a Siluan, which meant going elsewhere. As for the danger, she had made peace with the fact that the journey to Deema would necessarily involve some risk, whether of running into Separatists or pirates or some other sort of crime syndicate, but she was satisfied that Varda had chosen a safe route for her, and she knew how to use the ship's cloaking device and how to re-route the starship if she needed to. She had also resigned herself to a few years with the Jedi AgriCorps before she could ask to enrol as a novice at the Paloma Monastery, and even looked forward now to meeting the Jedi master Lu Mang who served there. What she had not made her peace with was seeing Varda standing there with one hip higher than the other as she kept the weight off her bad leg, yet knowing that Varda planned to stay behind on Hokto alone.

"I can go," Eo said, "but it's not good for you to stay here by yourself. So if you won't leave, then I should stay with you." They'd had this conversation before. The way Eo said it this time, it was almost an ultimatum.

Seeing the look on Eo's face Varda felt a stab of regret at her decision but didn't change her mind. "If my training has meant anything to you, please go," she said. "You will never become the Siluan you are called to be if you stay here with me."

Eo scraped a tear from her eye with the back of a dirty hand. "Then come with me."

Varda shook her head. "This is my path, to be a Jedi hermit. Not all things are accomplished by doing, some things by simply being. You must remember that in your life as a Siluan."

Later, when Varda had pause to consider what might have been, or what might not have been, if she had gone with Eo that day, it was clear to her that the only reason she had for staying behind was her reluctance to face her fellow Jedi – and worse, the Jedi Council – after her desertion from the Clone Wars. But for the moment, she was able to believe that her motives were noble.

Eo bit her lip and nodded, feeling numb and surreal.

"You've done enough work in the garden that I'll have what I need until winter. After that somehow I can manage. I don't need very much at my age. But get your things. If you're going you need to go now. And take a jar with some of the stew in the pot to eat along the way."

Eo hurried to the hut and came back with the jar and one other thing: the beige cloth bag from Ava Yen's starship, carrying the digital file reader with the Siluan texts she had Varda had been reading.

Together they walked slowly to Varda's starship. "When you get to Deema," Varda said as they walked through the forest, "don't talk to just anyone about your plan to be a Siluan. Not everyone will understand. But you can trust Lu Mang, Master Lu the younger Jedi call him. And his apprentice Devin is a good man. Tell them everything, and they can help you. I know you don't want to spend time in the AgriCorps, but the time you spend there is more precious than you think. Make sure to learn everything you can, and it will help you later. And if you run into some danger or trouble along the way, protect yourself however you can, but remember your calling: don't give way to anger or hate even in the face of evil. That is the way of a Jedi, and of a Siluan. That is what..." Varda trailed off. All this was to make the most of her final minutes with Eo, but she wished that lecturing wasn't how she would spend that time.

"I understand, Varda," Eo said. "I'll make sure, I'll do my best."

They continued to walk in comfortable silence until they reached the starship. It sat there in the clearing, sleek red and silver under its coat of sun-dried moss and lichen. The air was fragrant with the blue sabre-flowers Eo had planted around it.

The two stood looking at each other sadly for a moment. Suddenly Eo threw her arms around Varda. "I love you, Varda," she said. Surprised and touched and rather stiff, Varda somehow succeeded to hug Eo back.

"You are the daughter I could never have," she said. "May the Force be with you."

Eo boarded the ship, and Varda watched while it lifted off and sped out beyond her view. When night fell and stars shone in the dark void, the tree-frogs found Varda still standing there, looking out into the black sky.


	21. Unexpected Visitors

**Chapter 21: Unexpected Visitors**

BBY 14, year 5 of Imperial rule, one day after chapter 20

Devin never thought he could feel jealous of an agricultural protocol droid, but he did. It was early spring, a cold but sunny day, and he wanted to be out there under the big prairie sky, cruising around the pastures in his speeder to check on the first newborn _inu_ calves of the season. But no. Aggie, not Devin, was out there overseeing calving season, and Devin was standing in the farmhouse kitchen with his hands in a sink full of soapy water, working his way through a mountain of dirty dishes because the dishwasher was out of order, and until his wife Shie got her first paycheque they were too broke to get it fixed.

This was day two of his and Shie's new financial management plan. After it became clear last autumn that farming outside the Imperial Agriculture Program was no way to support a growing family, he and Shie spent the winter having long talks and making some hard decisions. They reluctantly agreed that Shie – who really wanted to stay home with the kids – would take full-time work as an agricultural mechanic. Nechako AgMech, where she'd previously picked up occasional part-time work, was recently acquired by Imperial AgSystems and so Shie, to her chagrin, found herself working for an Imperial crown corporation. Meanwhile, Devin – who felt really good about himself back when he was supporting his family by farming full-time – became part-time hobby farmer and full-time house-husband.

And so Devin stared out the kitchen window at the sunny fields he wanted to be working and rubbed the grubby dishcloth over yet another greasy plate. That he was feeling shaken for other reasons was an unwelcome companion to his discouragement. Just that morning he'd heard something on the radio that set his nerves on knife-edge.

"Daddy, I'm hungry!" Devin's five-year-old son Jonah wailed. He stood at the kitchen door, clutching his stuffed toy Wookie and looking at his dad with some consternation. Dad being in the kitchen happened often enough to be normal for him, but mom being away so much still didn't feel right. Wanting mom to be there made his hunger and his voice bigger.

"Jonah!" Devin whisper-shouted back, "Be quiet or you'll wake the baby!" Nine-month-old Siri was – blissfully, for Devin – asleep in the next room after her last diaper change, and Devin's key goal was to keep her asleep for the afternoon so that he could have some peace and quiet.

"I'm hungry!" Jonah whisper-shouted back.

"You need to say _please_ ," he reminded Jonah.

"PLEASE, may I have a snack?" Jonah said in the loudest whisper Devin had ever heard.

"Yes, you may," Devin said, emphasizing good manners. "Please sit down at the table."

Jonah took a seat, sat the Wookie on the chair beside him and waited.

Devin looked at the unfinished dishes and sighed, then wiped his wet hands on a tea-towel. The cupboard was pretty bare. A jar of Imperial Pride _Kua_ -nut Butter and a half-empty box of Galactic Star Wheat Thins were all the snack foods he had to offer. Shie was worried that Jonah might have a nut allergy, so he left the _kua_ -nut butter and grabbed the wheat thins. _Protein_ , Devin thought, _he needs protein, not just those empty carbs_. He went to the fridge. Just that morning, Devin had started an experiment. _Inu_ were normally raised for meat, not milk, but the cows were lactating now and most were docile enough to let Devin milk them. He figured home-grown milk was at least one thing he could do to help the ailing family budget along, and even felt a little proud of himself when he set a glass of the deep orange milk in front of his son along with the little plastic plate of wheat thins.

"Why is it orange?" Jonah asked when his dad put it on the table. The canned milk they usually got was white.

"In the spring the grass has more carotenoids..." Devin began, then the confused look on Jonah's face reminded him he was talking to a five-year-old. "The grass has orange stuff in it, and the cows put the orange stuff from the grass into their milk to make their calves healthy."

"So why isn't the grass orange?"

"Because the chlorophyll...the green stuff hides the orange stuff."

"But then why isn't the milk green?"

Devin wracked his brain. Why did the carotenoids end up in the milk and not the chlorophyll? For all his education in the Jedi AgriCorps, he couldn't remember. "You'll learn about that when you're older," he said, and Jonah took a sip of his orange milk.

With a sigh, Devin went back to his mountain of dirty dishes. _I'll have to get better at explaining stuff to the kids_ , he thought and stared out the window at the endless grassland and the big prairie sky. Prairie swallows were darting around after flying bugs like fish on a feeding frenzy. _Maybe I'll take Jonah to the barn to see the swallow's nest later,_ he thought and then with a swell of pride he realized how much he could teach them his kids. Even in a place like the Moosachu Plains of Nechako there was so much to explore together. Maybe being a homemaker dad wouldn't be so bad, he thought. He didn't love the housework, and the constant interruptions for snacks and diaper changes took some getting used to, but if he wasn't farming full-time there would be more chance for those special teaching moments, to take them down to the river to see the fish spawning in the fall, or to teach them the names of wildflowers in the spring. _I can do this,_ Devin thought. _It will be great._ With that thought, he managed to forget, for the moment, the radio broadcast he'd heard earlier, and started to push through that mound of dishes a little more quickly.

Just then a prickle on the back of Devin's neck, maybe the Force-sense of a Jedi or maybe the sixth-sense of a parent, told him to turn around. Jonah, who had evidently been dunking his crackers in his milk behind his dad's back, had dropped one into the glass and was trying to fish it out. That, in Devin's opinion, warranted a minor reprimand, but what made Devin draw in a sharp hiss of breath was that Jonah hadn't actually put his fingers in the milk; he held them a millimetre or so above the surface of the orange liquid, with a look of deep concentration on his face.

"Jonah, don't do that..." Devin said quietly, firmly.

Jonah knew he shouldn't be dunking his crackers in his milk, but he was so close to fishing this one out, so close...

"Jonah, I said NO."

Just then Jonah, seeing the tip of the cracker crest the surface of the milk, grabbed it between thumb and forefinger and then crammed it in his mouth.

Ignoring a direct instruction was one thing, but that was not what made the blood rise in Devin's neck. What set him on edge was the radio broadcast he'd heard that morning. Nechako had only one station, the Imperial-controlled Galactic Agriculture Radio, but if the planets were aligned right and there were no ion storms in the nearby space, he could pick up radio broadcasts from the Big Planet as people on Nechako called their nearest habited neighbour, Lothal. As he flipped the dial hoping to catch an episode of _Tumbleweed,_ his favourite farm sitcom, he came across a station with a man's voice reading off a series of news items, amateur fashion. Uninterested, he was about to flip past it when the words _Imperial atrocities_ caught his ears.

He'd listened wide-eyed to stories that never got air-time on Imperial radio channels: the occupation of Kashyyk and the enslavement of the Wookies, the use of ion disruptors to obliterate the Lassats in a bid to take over their home planet, and last of all before the station went too static to hear any more, a story about how Force-sensitive kids were being abducted by Imperial agents. Devin was not one for conspiracy theories and was inclined to take both pro-government and anti-government news reporting with a grain of salt, but this last story ran too near his fear for him to brush it off. And now that he couldn't deny that at least one of his kids was Force-sensitive, the first part of his fear was coming true: it wasn't just himself he needed to hide anymore.

 _Fear leads to anger,_ Master Lu's voice quoted Yoda in his mind, but it was too late. _Anger leads to..._

Devin slammed his wet hands palms-down on the table. Jonah jumped. "Jonah, I said NO!" Devin heard himself bellow.

First Jonah, then Siri started to wail. "You woke the baby!" Devin snapped at Jonah as tears streamed down the five-year-old's face. He ran and grabbed the bottle of breast-milk that Shie had left in the fridge and went to the next room to calm his screaming daughter. It was only when he felt the weight of her in his arms that he realized he was shaking, aching with tension in every muscle of his body at the shock of the aggression he'd just heard in his own voice.

All these past five years on Nechako, all these five years since Day One of the Empire when the Jedi were destroyed, Devin had been perfectly careful not to let anyone in Moosachu besides Shie know about his Jedi past. He'd lied through his teeth when his neighbours asked friendly questions about his life on Deema, and dodged their pointed inquiries about why he wasn't signing up for the Imperial Agriculture Program. When his neighbour Silas lost half his herd to a nasty strain of antibiotic-resistant bovine mastitis, he stood by and watched it happen even though his Jedi skills could have saved them. Even though that one act of refusing to use his AgriCorps training sucked more than all his own failure to run a farm outside the IAP, he'd done it and would do it again because he had no choice. Staying quiet equalled staying safe, and there was no option but to stay safe now that he had two kids in the picture.

But now all it would take was just one time for Jonah to get into a boasting match with his friends at junior hockey or homeschool support group and go _Well guess what? Look what_ I _can do!_ All it would take would be even once for Jonah to use the Force to get himself out of a sticky situation when he thought no one was looking, and the rumour of it would spread through Moosachu like wildfire. Devin wasn't sure what Imperial agents would pay for information about a Jedi survivor or a Force-sensitive child, but he was pretty sure it was enough to make at least one of Moosachu's hundred or so inhabitants think twice about loyalty to a neighbour.

With Siri still screaming, Devin forced himself to take a deep breath, then another, bouncing her up and down for awhile before holding the baby bottle out to her. Gradually she stopped crying and latched onto the bottle, holding it with both hands and making suckling noises as she looked up at Devin with blinking eyes. He wasn't sure if it was him calming her down or her calming him down, but gradually he could feel his muscles start to relax. Bit by bit his mind cleared, and bit by bit one thing he could see: he'd made a mistake.

In his determination to _keep quiet, keep safe_ , he'd kept quiet even to his own kids. He'd never once mentioned either the Jedi or the Force to Jonah, not because he hadn't dreamed of teaching his kids about the most basic elements of the universe but because the less they knew the less risk there was.

After a few minutes, Siri became suddenly heavier in Devin's arms, and she let the nipple of the bottle slip out of her mouth as her little round head lolled back in Devin's hand. Over the even sound of her breath, Devin could hear Jonah sniffling in the kitchen. He sighed.

 _What do I do now?_ Devin asked himself.

 _Do the right thing_ , Devin's inner voice said. That's what it always said.

Devin laid Siri gently in her crib, then went back to the kitchen. He stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at Jonah, who was sitting backwards in his seat and clutching the back of the kitchen chair, tears and whatnot dribbling from his eyes and nose.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," Devin said, not sure where he was going with this.

Jonah wiped his nose on his sleeve. He didn't understand why his dad had yelled at him so hard. He just wanted to fish out his drowned cracker, and he remembered mom telling him off last time he put his fingers in his milk, so he made sure not to touch the milk with his fingers this time, that was all.

"I was scared when I saw you do that because there's some bad people out there who might take you away if they find out you can do that. I don't want that to happen to you, so you need to keep it a secret, OK?" Devin said in his best parent-voice.

Jonah nodded because he was supposed to nod, but he didn't really understand what it was all about.

Devin hated this. He wanted to teach Jonah about the power that was in him and all around him, about the world that could open up to him if he disciplined himself and paid attention. But neither he nor Jonah was really in the place for that talk right now.

"Can I give you a hug?" he said.

Jonah didn't want to hug. He slipped off his chair, pulling the stuffed toy Wookie with him as he crawled under the table.

Devin felt like he'd been kicked in the gut. Part of him wanted to wheedle with Jonah to come out, but another side of him said to wait and try again later. He sighed. He wished he hadn't snapped at Jonah. He wished he could have talked to him about the Force way earlier. He wished it didn't have to be so complicated.

Not knowing what else to do, Devin went back to the kitchen sink. The mountain of dishes hadn't gotten much smaller, but the dishwater was cold and murky now. At the sink, Devin reached his hand down into the unseen ick of granular food debris that floated near the bottom of the basin and pulled the plug. While he listened to the ugly gurgle of water going down the drain, he stared out the window. _I need to learn how to talk to Jonah about the Force, and about the Empire,_ he thought, but this time the empty prairie offered no inspiration.

Just then, the doorbell rang. _Nuts, it's probably Silas_ , Devin thought. Silas was supposed to drop off some old haymaking equipment that he was lending to Devin for the season, but Devin had been hoping that Silas would come by later, when life and the kitchen weren't such a mess.

"Hey Silas," Devin said as he opened the door, then "Oh!"

On the farmhouse doorstep stood a young female human quite unlike anyone Devin had ever seen before. She was small, dark-haired, dark-eyed and wiry. Her battered shoes and her tattered pants and tunic – all too threadbare for the cool spring day – looked like they might have been beige once but were now mottled grey and brown. And though spring had only just emerged from a cold, dark winter, she was as deeply sun-tanned as someone who had just seen a year's worth of summer. The only thing about her that wasn't deeply weathered was the beige cloth bag that she wore slung over one shoulder. She clasped the strap of the bag with both hands, and shivered.

"Hi," Devin said. "How can I help you?"

"Sorry to bother you," she said, "but I was obliged to make an emergency landing in your field. I'm not sure what's wrong with the starship, but could you help me find a mechanic?" There was something in her accent or her manner of speech that Devin found familiar yet hard to place.

"My wife's a mechanic," Devin said. "If you don't mind waiting til she's back, she can probably help you."

"When will she come, do you think?" the girl asked.

"She'll be back tonight."

The girl looked relieved. "Thanks," she said, "that would be great."

There was an awkward pause, and then Devin remembered his hospitality.

"Hey, you must be cold," he said. "You want to come inside while you wait?"

"Thanks," the girl said again, and stepped inside.

"Sorry the place is such a mess," Devin said as he led her into the kitchen. "I'm Devin, by the way, and this is my son Jonah." Jonah, who was looking out from under the table to see who was at the door, hid his face behind his stuffed toy Wookie.

The girl smiled. "Nice to meet you," she said. "My name is Eo."

Devin drew up a chair and gestured for Eo to take a seat at the kitchen table. She sank onto the hard chair with a sign of relief. From the field where CX24 brought the starship in for a not-so-gentle landing, Devin's farmhouse was just a blob in the distance, and Eo's feet and legs ached from the long walk across the prairie.

"Where are you headed?" Devin asked. It seemed as good a question as any to make conversation with a little bush-woman who just showed up out of nowhere. He poured a cup of hot tea for her from a big thermos on the counter and passed it to her across the table.

Eo wrapped her hands around the mug and held it close to her to feel its warmth before taking a sip. "Please don't laugh," she said ruefully, "I'm on my way to Deema, but it seems my nav-droid had other ideas." Deema and Nechako were on more or less opposite ends of the galaxy.

"Oh," Devin said, "my wife's from Deema. You have family there?"

Eo shook her head. "I'm going to the AgriCorps station there," she said.

Devin's eyes flew open, then narrowed. "You mean the IMAg station?"

"IMAg? What's IMAg?"

"Imperial Ministry of Agriculture."

"Imperial...?" Eo tilted her head to one side, confused. Then her confused look turned to horror. "Oh no, did the Separatists win the war?"

"Um, where have you been for the last five years?"

"I was stranded in the Hokto system."

"The Hokto system? That's a no-fly zone."

"I know," Eo said, "we didn't mean to go there. Ava Yen – he was the pilot – he and I were on our way to Deema from the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, but we came out of hyperspace wrong and crash-landed on a little planet there. It was only just recently that Varda and I - Varda's the hermit who took me in there - we managed to fix her ship and find a gap in the debris field so I could leave. But what's happened to the AgriCorps station?"

Devin took a moment to digest what Eo just said. "Just a sec," he said, then bent sideways in his chair to look at Jonah, who was still under the table. Someday he would need to tell Jonah what he was about to tell Eo, but not now. "Jonah," he said, "could you please go and play in your bedroom? I need to have an adult conversation with Eo right now."

"I want to play here," Jonah said flatly.

"If you're good and you go right now, you can watch _Space Wookies_ before dinner."

Jonah wasn't normally allowed to watch HoloNet programs, so he grabbed his Wookie and went. Devin waited until he heard the bedroom door click shut, then sighed. He hated the way he was handling things with Jonah, and promised himself that he would connect with him properly later, but right now he needed to have this conversation with Eo. _Where do I even begin_? he thought. "You grew up in the Jedi temple?" he asked cautiously.

Eo nodded. "I was there until I was almost thirteen, but I was given early reassignment to the AgriCorps."

Devin weighed Eo in his mind. He wouldn't put it past some ambitions Imperial agent to try a trick like this to get a Jedi survivor out of hiding, but as he tried to tune in to Eo's Force-signature he could sense no guile in her, just a quiet intensity and an innocence that he was reluctant to shatter. After a pause, Devin began, "The Force must be strong with you, Eo. You're very lucky not to have showed up on Deema with a story like that. The former chancellor of the Republic is now the Galactic Emperor, and he had the whole Jedi Order destroyed when he took over."

Eo shook her head in disbelief. "But the Jedi Knights...couldn't they...?"

Devin shook his head. "They were betrayed. The Republic's own clone troopers shot them down. I only hope some escaped, but as far as I can tell they're all gone."

Eo gave Devin a blank look, the kind of blank, stunned look that people get in the moment before they fully register the pain of an unexpected wound. Devin knew the feeling behind that look: the feeling like his head just split in two because what he thought was unshakable wasn't there anymore, the feeling when hundreds of Jedi he knew, loved and respected flashed through his mind and he knew he'd never see them again. But even as Eo felt all this, one person was foremost in her thoughts. "But Varda," she said, "Varda doesn't know then...she might be the only one left. Oh, Varda!" With that Eo burst into tears.

Devin gave her a moment to collect herself, and passed her a handkerchief. He did his best to keep a serious and concerned expression. It definitely hurt to see Eo taking in the news he'd had five years to process, but he couldn't help also feel something more like excitement, elation even. Here in front of him was a fellow survivor! And if he wasn't mistaken, Eo brought news of one other.

"Varda is a Jedi?" he asked cautiously, hoping his hopes wouldn't be dashed. Last he'd heard, Varda was presumed dead after she went missing in action during the first year of the Clone Wars.

Eo nodded, and sniffed, and wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. "She asked me not to tell which planet she's on, but yes, she's a Jedi, and a hermit."

"The same Varda Wahi who used to teach in the Jedi Temple?"

Eo looked up at Devin in surprise. "You knew her?"

"I didn't know her well, but I was a Jedi before I got married, and she was a friend of my mentor, Master Lu."

"Master Lu, the Yemerian Jedi who works with the AgriCorps? Varda said I should talk to him, but he must be gone now too..." Eo started to cry again.

"Look, you must be tired and hungry and this is a lot to take in. Please try to drink something at least."

Eo took another sip of the tea and, finding it cooler now, drank as the rest as if she had been very thirsty.

Devin made a mental note to make sure Eo to ate a solid meal – and got some sleep - once she'd had some more time to collect herself. "It must have been amazing spending all that time with Varda Wahi," Devin said, hoping to direct the conversation in a more positive vein. "Did she work on Jedi training with you?"

Eo shook her head. "I didn't ask her to. I would like to become a Siluan, so she spent a good deal of time teaching me about that."

Devin's eyes were like saucers.

"I was hoping to find a Siluan elder to train me as soon as I finish my duties with the AgriCorps, but there is no AgriCorps now," Eo said, more to herself than to Devin, as if through a fog of surreality. "Maybe I should just go straight to Yemer and ask to join the monastery right away." Even though this was what she'd wanted to do all along, under the circumstances she couldn't feel happy about it yet.

Devin winced. "Eo, I hate to break it to you, but it's not safe for someone like you to go to Yemer right now," he said, but when he saw how crushed Eo looked he decided not to bother trying to explain what he'd heard from the Yemerian refugees who now lived just north of him. "You're welcome to stay here with us as long as you like," he said more brightly, "but I know a man on Iwaki who's a Siluan elder, both him and his wife. He grew up as a Jedi too, so they'd be a good people for you to train with, if you like."

Eo's face lit up. "On Iwaki? Can you introduce me to them?"

"If we can get there. I don't have a starship."

"If you'll take me there, you can have my ship," Eo said, "if it can be fixed, anyways."

"Wow, that's very generous of you," Devin said.

Eo shrugged. "I won't need it anymore anyways."

It occurred to Devin that the trip to Iwaki might do him good. Ava Kirrin, whom he had last seen at his mother's funeral, was among a minority of Siluan elders who were married, and he had children, a boy of twelve and a girl of ten. He was also one of very very few who was formerly a Jedi, though he'd left the Order decades ago in his rebellious teens. _I can talk to Ava Kirrin_ , Devin thought. _He might know how to handle things with Jonah._

Devin's face broke into a smile. "It's a deal!" he said. "We'll go as soon as I can get away for a day."

# # #

That night after dinner when she'd finished nursing Siri, Shie gladly took a look at Eo's starship.

"She's lucky it didn't explode on take-off," Shie told Devin. "whoever worked on it last totally overfilled the electrolyte on the anti-gravity module, and the electrolyte's not even the right concentration for this model."

"Can you fix it?" Devin asked. He really wanted the answer to be yes.

"Probably. I think I have enough spare parts to get it going."

"If you can, I want to use it to take her to Iwaki to see Ava Kirrin, and the ship is ours if I do."

Shie looked impressed. "That's very kind of her," she said. "I've been turning down off-planet work 'cause of not having a starship to get there. But I'd like to have a word with the idiot who let that crap nav-droid fly a kid like her through hyperspace."

"Varda's not an idiot," Devin said defensively, "she's a Jedi."

Shie rolled her eyes. "That only makes it worse."

Between work and children, it was three long Moosachu days before Devin could arrange to take Eo to Ava Kirrin's place on Iwaki. During that time, Eo shared in the life of the Baxter family. Shie politely declined her offer to help fix the starship, but was truly grateful to see Jonah sit spellbound while Eo told him stories of tree-frogs in forests the prairie boy had never seen. She even changed her mind about Varda when she heard more from Eo about her life on Hokto. After the kids were in bed at night, Devin told Eo stories of life in the AgriCorps and had Eo wishing she could have spent some time there after all. And Aggie, if droids can be happy, was over Nechako's three moons because Eo listened carefully to every long-winded detail that she could dredge from her memory bank about Siluan gardening techniques, and answered every painstaking question Aggie asked about the means of growing and preserving food that Eo and Varda had employed in the Hokto system. Siri was too young to remember that time, but her family later recounted those days among their favourite memories.

In the afternoon the day before Devin planned to leave for Iwaki, he was just wrapping up some farm chores when a decrepit cargo ship landed beside the house. He went over to see who it was, and to his surprise, his old friend Garth Jetty stepped out.

"Garth!" Devin yelled, and ran over to give him a bear hug and a friendly punch on the shoulder. "Where have you been? And oh...what happened to you?" he added, just noticing that what looked like a bandana was actually a bandage around an ugly welt on his friend's head.

"I thought we were talking about you, not me," Garth said drily. "But hey, I got something big on I want to talk to you about. Do you have anything stiff to drink? I could use one or three right now."

Devin grinned. "So that's why you showed up! C'mon, I've got some of my neighbour's home-brew in the kitchen."

In the kitchen, now in a much cleaner state than it had been when Eo arrived, Garth and Devin stood at the kitchen counter as Devin poured two tall glasses of home-brew from a brown jug.

"Why is it purple?" Garth asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Silas puts some kind of herbs in it, to cut the hangover."

Garth laughed. "Works for me!" he said, and raised his glass. "Here's to busting out of prison."

"Prison? How'd you..." Devin was so surprised that he almost forgot to take a salutary sip of his glass.

Garth wiped his mouth on his sleeve after taking a long draught. "Let's just say I ran into an old friend of yours who's working for the other side now and she didn't like the way I answered her questions about you AgriCorps folks, but I got lucky. A buddy I met in prison's a friend of Saw Gerrera...best guy I ever met, busted the lot of us out of there."

Devin looked at Garth in surprise. "Saw Gerrera, like Saw Gerrera the terrorist?"

"You say terrorist," Garth said, and raised his glass to his new hero, "and I say freedom fighter." He drained his glass and plunked it down on the counter, eyeing the brown jug and then Devin to indicate that he wanted more.

Devin gave Garth a hard look as he poured him a second glass. He noticed a reckless gleam in Garth's eye, and a much rougher manner than he'd seen in him before. Glad as he was to see Garth alive and well, he wasn't sure he liked the change.

Just then, Eo came into the kitchen with Siri in the stroller and Jonah riding piggy-back. She looked surprised to see a stranger there.

"Well now! Who's this lovely young lady?" Garth said in a manly voice.

Devin rolled his eyes. "Shie's out at work right now, but these are our kids, Jonah and Siri, and this is our friend Eo, who's been staying with us for a few days. Eo, this is my friend, Garth Jetty."

"Hi there," Garth said in a deep voice. Devin wasn't sure how Eo managed to keep a straight face and give a polite nod when Garth winked at her.

"This is one lucky kid we've got here," Devin said, pushing aside his chagrin. "She was on her way from the Jedi temple to the old AgriCorps station but got shipwrecked on the way, so she's missed all the crap that's happened. Tomorrow I'm taking her to Ava Kirrin to train as a Siluan."

"A Siluan?" Garth raised an eyebrow at Eo. "Nice idea, but bad timing kid. Really bad timing. The Empire's trying to wipe those guys out like the Ukio Potato Beetle."

Devin winced. "I heard things that made me wonder if that's what's happening, but I was hoping it wasn't true."

"Well it is, and you know who's at the bottom of it? One of your own."

"Ry Kyver?"

"How'd you know?" Garth said, sounding rather annoyed that Devin had stolen his thunder.

"I didn't. I just put two and two together and got four. She's the only Jedi I know of who isn't dead or in hiding, and she must have had some change of sympathies to be head of IMAg."

"A change of sympathies? She's apprentice to a Sith Lord more like it. I got picked up by her crew after I saw you last, and I wouldn't wish that woman on my worst enemy. We've got to take her out, and soon."

Devin shook his head. "If she's practicing the ways of the Sith, destroying her could be very dangerous, even for a Jedi Knight. The dark energy that would be released could..."

"Hey, what's the matter with you, kid?" Garth interrupted. Devin turned and saw Eo staring blankly ahead, a troubled expression on her face.

"Oh, I'm sorry Eo," Devin began.

Eo shook herself. "No, no, it's just...I'd forgotten that things like that happen. I wish...I wish she could turn back."

Garth gave a kind of snort and rolled his eyes. "Sorry to break it to you, kid," he told Eo, "but Darksiders like that don't come back. Jedi kill them or they self-destruct. They don't come back."

Devin winced, both at Garth's rough manners and at Eo's naivety. Then he remembered that he'd rather his kids weren't in the room. "Eo, if you don't mind, could you take Jonah and Siri to play in the basement while I chat with Garth here?"

Eo looked a little hurt and confused, but picked Siri up and took Jonah by the hand. As soon as the door closed behind them, Devin gestured for Garth to sit down at the table, then continued.

"But anyways, you said you had something big on. What's up?"

Garth leaned forward and put his empty glass down on the table with a plunk. "I don't know about you," he said, "but I'm done taking shit from the Empire. It's time to strike back, and the place to do it is right here in your own backyard." He thumped the table for emphasis.

"Like how?"

"You probably heard the Empire's just about to open a hydro-power dam that'll flood out the entire Bulkley Valley?"

Devin rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that'll pretty much kill ninety percent of grain production here on Nechako. The price of feed's going to go through the roof."

Garth's expression made it clear that he didn't give a damn about the price of feed grain. "And you heard they're expropriating the ranchers on Nechako Ridge? With the power from the dam they can open up strip mining for aluminum ore there, just grind up the whole Ridge til it's gone."

Devin leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. "Yeah, I hate to say it, but most people here are pretty keen on the money that'll come out of it. Everybody's saying this planet could do with a new hospital and a couple more schools." He couldn't quite admit it even to himself, but with two kids he too was hard pressed to say _no_ to government-funded education and healthcare, even if that government was the Empire.

Garth snorted. "You're not going to get hospitals or schools. The Empire's going to drain Nechako dry. They're taking all the minerals and profits off-world for some big secret project they got on. Nechako'll be a ghost-planet by the time they're done. But," he thumped his fist on the table, "not if I have anything to do with it. I've got my ship full of explosives, and I'm meeting up with a bunch of the ranchers down in Bulkley tomorrow. We're going start by blowing up the foundation for the Empire's nice little dam. You in?"

"No," Devin shook his head. "No, no, no."

"Oh, come on! Last time I saw you, you were all like, ' _we need to fight this_.'"

Devin rolled his eyes. _Last time I saw you, you were all like 'you need to hide,'_ he thought but didn't say it. "Garth, there's a ton of things I'd do for you," he said, "but this isn't one of them. I've got kids now, and that changes everything. I can't go taking risks like that."

"You're kidding me."

"No, I'm serious. I don't like the odds that you'll get away with this. The whole Nechako Council is pro-Imperial and I hate to say it, but even if it is all just propaganda, money talks, so you'll have more than half the locals against you plus Imperial forces to boot. I'm on your side, but I just think the Empire's going to hit back harder than you can take."

"So you're not going to help?"

"No."

"Nuts!" Garth said, half under his breath, and went to run his hand through his wild shock of hair, only to come up against the welt under his bandage. He grimaced and swore.

Devin laughed. "Look, I've got to get some dinner on before Shie gets home, but why don't you make yourself comfortable in the living room? You can eat with us and spend the night here before you head down to Bulkley if you want."

Garth looked at Devin sadly, but then squared his shoulders and forced a grin. "Thanks, man," he said. "That'd be great."

# # #

The first light before dawn found Garth and Devin standing beside Garth's cargo ship, both ready to go but neither ready to say goodbye. They both looked down at the cold ground, not sure what to say.

Garth kicked at a clump of grass. "If you change your mind, come find me in Bulkley when you get back," he said gruffly.

Devin gave a sad smile. "If you change your mind, you're welcome to just crash here for a while. Or when you finish up anyways."

"Maybe next time I'll hit you up to help me take out Ry Kyver," Garth said, and winked.

Devin rolled his eyes. "Good luck with that one. Anyways, Eo's already in the ship. I'd better go."

"May the Force be with you," Garth said, sincerely, and grabbed Devin in a bear-hug.

Devin hugged Garth back and felt a lump in his throat. "No one's said that to me in years, not since..."

"Not since five years ago when shit went sideways," Garth said as he let Devin go.

"Yeah," Devin said, and they looked at each other in silence. For a moment, Devin almost wished he was going with Garth, maybe not to blow up that Imperial dam, but to do something, somehow, to fight back. But only for a moment. A wife, two kids, a farm...plus he needed to get Eo to Iwaki quickly and quietly. "I got to go," Devin said. "Take care of yourself, Garth. See you round, eh?"

Garth gave Devin a mock salute, then got into his starship and took off. Devin watched the chunky freighter disappear into the dusky south-east sky before he turned to his own starship, where Eo was waiting.


	22. The View from Yalith

**Welcome to chapter 22!** A quick content warning before we begin: this chapter includes mildly graphic references to self-harm.

 **The Way of a Siluan, Chapter 22: The View from Yalith**

BBY 14, year 5 of Imperial rule, more or less concurrent with the latter part of chapter 21

The cold water was a welcome shock. There was hot water too, of course, in the little grey-walled institutional lavatory down the hall from her office on the top floor of the IMAg headquarters on Ukio, but the sting of the cold water suited her mood better. With each splash of cold water, Ry Kyver could feel the thick layer of make-up on her face and neck and arms slowly dissolve away into nothing.

When she felt the last of it gone, Ry felt for the tap, turned it off and then groped for her towel. When she had scrubbed her face dry, she opened her eyes to the mirror. Her skin was sallow grey again now. Her native mulatto complexion had long since forsaken her, and it took that thick layer of make-up to make her look normal enough to assure farmers and agri-business leaders alike that IMAg had their best interests at heart.

Ry glared at her grey self in the mirror and then realized why her eyes itched so much. She peeled the dark brown contact lenses out of her eyes and then looked at her reflection again, yellow iris glaring back at yellow irises, dark purple bags under her eyes.

Ry Kyver used to like looking at her reflection in the mirror. Even under the too-bright washroom lights, she used to look good standing there in black jeans and a black sports bra. But now the curves of her waist were broken by angular hip bones jutting out above her belt, and though the iron grip of her sports bra forced her breasts not to sag, it did nothing to hide the ribs that protruded under her rough grey skin. Her hair was more grey now than it ought to be at thirty-six, but that at least was very nearly still the same dark wavy hair of the Kyvers of Mandalore. But Mandalore was a bitter memory. Ry quickly pulled her shirt back on and then slammed her hand against the control panel on the wall. The washroom lights went dark and the door swished open.

Ry stormed out into the hallway. "I hate makeup!" she griped bitterly to the zip-all no-one who was there to hear. It was 0200 h local time, and not a single light was on in the building, only the orange glow of the exterior lights coming through the window at the end of the hall sent a long shadow striding ahead of her. Hating make-up didn't mean she could choose not to wear it. Her public role as Minister of Agriculture required her to look like a normal human being, and ever since the massacre at the monastery on Yemer four years ago, that was impossible without dark brown contact lenses and pale brown skin-paint.

 _Is it worth it?_ a little voice asked her as she clipped down the dark hallway in her black leather boots.

Ry crushed that thought like it was some little buzzing insect, but that didn't stop another thought from gnawing at her like a little maggot from within.

 _You have yet to destroy that One._

Vader's voice taunted her, haunted her.

 _If you fail to destroy that One, she will unmake all you have accomplished_.

Whatever accomplishment Ry reported to Vader, whether she hunted down the last of the Siluan monks on Marfa or got a new crop variety ready for the Imperial Agriculture Program ahead of schedule, that was all he said.

"He's just trying to intimidate you," Nathan told her. "He's a bully. Ignore him."

But she couldn't ignore him. The Emperor required her to report to Vader, and in the rare audiences she was granted with the Emperor, the Emperor said the same thing. Even though it felt like a blasphemy against herself to think that one of those blasted Siluans could possibly have anything on her, she could not doubt, because in her own dark meditations she too sensed it. But sensing that _that One_ was out there didn't mean she could find her.

Ry stopped in her tracks, there in the hallway half-way to her office. She did that sometimes now, not knowing why, tension frozen into her arms and shoulders as her mind raced, trapped inside an unending circle: until she destroyed that One, she sensed, she would not be able to complete the other project the Emperor had assigned her, yet without the results of that project, she didn't see how she would find the insight to track down that One. Her thoughts circled frantically until at last, in desperation, her mind leapt to a wild hope: escape.

"No!" she hissed at herself and shook her head so hard that she felt like it rattled her brain. Jerking herself out of her trance, she pushed herself forward down the hall. She didn't come this far to escape. She would prove that she was worthy to be more than a second-rank Jedi relegated to the AgriCorps, worthy to be more than a dinky little Minister of Agriculture, worthy to do more than bow and scrape to a shrivelled old man and his mechanical monstrosity of an apprentice.

Hope, or lack thereof, for proving herself sat in an incubator in a little room adjacent the main laboratory on the second floor. Even though Ry had hours of office work waiting for her at her desk, she walked past her office and turned to the elevator and pressed the button to go down.

It wasn't until she reached that little room with the incubator that she turned on the sickly yellow light of the UV-free lamp she used in that room. By its light, she checked the computer. She saw no reason to expect that she would find what she wanted there, but compulsively she checked anyway. The latest quantitative DNA analysis readout displayed on the screen showed exactly what it showed hundreds of other times: no change whatsoever to the midi-chlorian levels in any of her cell cultures. And this was experimental iteration number 665.

Ry knew that she had the quantitative DNA protocol down too well to second-guess the results on the screen, but as if under some compulsion to torment herself she went to check the incubator anyways. Opening the lid, she stared down at the gleaming grid of petri dishes. She could sense life in each of them, but none of that particular hum of energy that they would hold if especially sensitive to the Force.

The Emperor never told her why he wanted midi-chlorian-enhanced cell cultures, but she began to suspect. Channelling the Dark Side of the Force was like being a wire conducting more electrical current than it was designed to handle, and his body, too, was burning out. She'd seen him: powerful in his person but shrunken, shrivelled in body. He would need a way to renew himself, and the ability to custom-design Force-adept biological tissues for a cybernetic body would allow him not only to live forever but to live in the body of his choosing.

Succeeding to provide him with that possibility would, Ry thought, make her extremely valuable, irreplaceable even. That, more than anything, was what she really wanted. And she too would need a new body one day. But in the meantime, she had a simpler, more elegant plan, if only she could make it work.

Reaching down into the incubator, Ry drew out a petri-dish and opened it, looking for a moment at the perfectly round, smooth white bacterial colonies on the surface of the translucent brown nutrient agar. This was a culture of _Lactobacter acidophilus_ , one of many bacterial species that live as endosymbionts of humans and other mammals. The research literature was full of scientific studies showing that these endosymbionts can influence not only digestion and immunity, but also mood, libido, ability to focus, even personality. Ry hypothesized that their midi-chlorian levels could also play a role in modulating their host's Force-sensitivity. She didn't have proof yet, not the solid scientific proof that comes from multiple replicates of a positive result, but she did have anecdotal evidence.

Once, one beautiful once a year ago, she succeeded to induce elevated midi-chlorian levels in ten of those cultures. Introducing a sample of the altered cells to her body was as simple as taking a capsule. It took a few hours to feel the effect, but before long it felt like some huge curtain had been opened in her mind. She could see things through the Force she couldn't see before. High on her new power, in one short week she hunted down the scattered Siluan hermits of Ryloth, even though they previously eluded her in the complicated system of caves and canyons that marked the planet's stark landscape. And then the effect wore off. Both she and her cell cultures went back to normal, and she never replicated the result again. What was more, _that One_ was not among the dead on Ryloth.

Now she felt a low, smouldering anger at those smug white bacterial colonies. She should be capable of doing this, capable of making them obey her. But no. The memory of her one success taunted her now, holding out just enough hope that maybe, just maybe if she could do it again, she would see through the Force clearly enough to find that One. Yet those recalcitrant little cells sat there, reminding her that she was failing again and again. Disgusted, she spat into the open petri-dish.

The computer beeped. In blocky green letters, the screen displayed a new message from her secretarial droid: at 0300 h, Vader was coming. He wanted a report on her progress. In person. Ry glanced at the chronometer on the wall. It was 0230 h.

Ry drew her pocket-knife from her belt and scraped the cell culture, contaminated now anyways, into the bio-waste and then hucked the petri-dish in the garbage. There was no sink in that little room, but she felt her way through the dark of the main laboratory to the tap at the nearest lab bench. Under the hiss of cold water, she ran her fingers back and forth against the smooth flats of the blade, feeling until the gel of the nutrient agar was all washed away. Knife clean, she turned off the tap and touched a finger to the blade's sharp edge.

Without quite knowing why, Ry drew the blade hard across the end of her middle finger, then stood and listened to the slow _plink, plink, plink_ of blood dripping into the stainless steel sink.

# # #

"She doubts," he said over his rasping breath.

"She doubts? Vader, you doubt."

Sitting in his personal starship en route to meet with Ry Kyver on Ukio, Vader regarded the hologram of his master coldly and let a full three cycles of his breathing apparatus pass before he answered. "I do not doubt," he said "that she intends to succeed. I only question whether she will, as does she."

"Your impatience does you credit, Vader, but I am not ready to dispense with her yet. She has yet to destroy that One."

"No doubt I can destroy them both."

"No, Vader," the Emperor said, and even in the hologram, Vader could see him press his lips together. "You are still young in the ways of the Dark Side. You do not yet see as I see. That One is _yin_ to Ms. Kyver's _yang_. In destroying that One she will acquire the energies of that One and make them her own. Then she will be complete. Then she will be able to do that which I have asked of her."

Vader narrowed his eyes behind his mask and flexed his prosthetic fingers inside his black glove. The Emperor had not told him why he wanted Ry Kyver to create cell lines with enhanced midi-chlorian levels, but Vader could guess. Midi-chlorian-enhanced cell lines, with their capacity for heightened Force sensitivity, could be used to custom-design the biological component of a new cybernetic body of his master's choosing. The Emperor would need this before long. Ever since he was first disfigured while blasting the Jedi Master Mace Windu with Force lightning, the Sith lord's body was slowly burning out and shrivelling more and more as the years went by.

This did not bother Vader. When the time came to make himself master, it would be just as well if the current Emperor had only strength in the Force and not strength of body. For Vader's part, after being hacked to pieces and then scorched in the lava flows of Mustafar, his body had suffered little further change, and so the results of the midi-chlorian project were, as far as he was concerned, both unattainable by Ry Kyver and irrelevant to himself. His own goal for Ry Kyver was to be rid of her as soon as possible. The Sith do not share power well; Vader resented his master's regard for 'Ms. Kyver' and found her arrogance infuriating.

"Yet if she should fail..." he let his words trail off in a hiss of breath. His master had said himself that 'that One' would unmake Ry Kyver's work – the Imperial Agriculture Program, the decimation of the Siluans – if allowed to remain. Vader, for his part, doubted that a mere Siluan could hold that sort of power, but it was still a point he could lean on to wear his master down, to persuade him to be done with Ry Kyver now, not later.

"She will not fail, Vader," the Emperor said. "Her pride depends on it. She will succeed, or she will destroy herself in trying."

Vader stared at the streaky hologram figure of his hooded master and did not answer. _She herself says the Siluans are hard to find even through the Force_ , he thought, and his master caught the essence of his feeling.

"No Vader, that One will be found. That One was long hidden but has now emerged, and in the same stroke a great boon will be granted Ms. Kyver for finding her."

Vader let the sound of his breath fill the air around him in his starship as he considered this. He did not have his master's flair for prophecy, but his own Force-sense told him that not all would go as his master foretold. The Emperor could sense this doubt in him, even over the hologram.

"You doubt, Vader, but you will soon see. What I have foreseen will soon come to pass. I wholly expect that within three days or less Ms. Kyver will both find that One and destroy her."

Behind his black mask, what was left of Vader's lips curled into a smile. He did not yet dare to defy his master by taking Ry Kyver out without his permission, but he could still mess with her, and those words his master just spoke would make for excellent ammunition when they met.

"Don't be too harsh with her, Vader," the Emperor said. "I yet require her cooperation."

Through what was left of Vader's body ran a little quiver, the grim vestige of a laugh. "As you wish," he said, then bowed, and his master ended the transmission.

# # #

At 0300 h, Ry went down to meet Darth Vader in the courtyard outside the IMAg headquarters. The courtyard lamp made a circle of garish light from within which neither the stars nor anything in the surrounding darkness could be seen. There, she bowed to him, trembling, bending down on her knees and touching her forehead to the ground.

"All this time and yet that One remains," he said before she could even rise.

Ry quickly got to her feet, eyes smouldering. "I've destroyed all their monasteries, I've tracked down every Siluan known anywhere, and any premonition I had of their presence, I followed throughout the galaxy. Even in my dreams, I roam the galaxy, searching, but I need more time." Her voice, which had started out slow and scraping rock bottom, gathered energy as she spoke until her words came with a force that would have cowed her subordinates, but Vader was unmoved. He paused, allowing her to feel the menace of his breath until she was the one who shrank back into herself.

"That One was long hidden but has now emerged. Have you not sensed it?" he said. His whole manner was calm, cool, measured.

Ry folded her arms across her chest and glared at him with more than the usual hate, but didn't answer. From this Vader knew that she did not sense it; he didn't sense the emergence of the Emperor's prophesied One either, but that was not the point.

"And so the Emperor expects you to find and destroy that One within three days," he said.

"That's impossible," Ry said quietly.

"Then perhaps you are aware," Vader said, "that the Imperial Agriculture Program is now capable of running without you."

In the warm Ukio night, Ry felt suddenly cold. "I will find a way," she said, but she couldn't keep her voice from shaking.

"That remains to be seen," Vader said, and with that thought, he left her there.

# # #

Juggling an armload of stuff – a box of crop samples, his datapad, and whatnot – Nathan Xeres used his elbow to push the button on the control panel to open the door of the lab. It was only 0600 h, so he was surprised to see the door open and the light on in the little side-room that housed that project Ry was so obsessed with finishing for the Emperor. On his way by, he poked his head in.

"Ry, you're here early," he said, but then stopped in his tracks. Ry was standing there, leaning against the lab bench near the computer. A stack of petri dishes stood on the lab bench beside her, one of them open. She didn't seem to see him. She stared down, eyes dead, arms hanging at her sides.

"Ry, are you OK?" Nathan tried to keep his voice steady, but pain spiked through him when he noticed the fresh knife-marks crisscrossing up and down her forearms.

It was not until he was right there, peering into her ashen face, that she snapped out of her trance and quickly pulled down her sleeves. She glared at him.

"Ry," he said gently, "you look really rough. I can handle stuff here. Please, just go home and get some sleep."

Ry laughed in his face. "Sleep?" she said. "The Dark Side never sleeps." She ended with a grim cackle, her eyes darting rapidly around the room, unable to truly look him in the eye.

Sometimes Nathan wished Ry would let him hold her. Not as a lover – he and Tifini were happy together – but as a friend. He wished she'd let him help her find a way beyond that storm she always seemed to have inside her, the same way she'd helped him find himself as a Force-user years ago. He sighed and shifted the armload of crop samples and other stuff he was carrying.

As he did so, Ry noticed something nestled carefully on top of the stack: a red and gold tetrahedron, ten centimetres on each side. "What are you doing with the holocron?" she snapped. "It should be in my desk!"

"Which is why," Nathan said pointedly, "I was going to go put it back. If you remember correctly, you gave me a rather long list of locations to scout out for those Siluans of yours, and you _said_ that I should check the Sith holocron for relevant information."

Ry did remember, now that he reminded her, but wasn't going to let him know that. "And did you find anything on there?" she asked as if she expected the answer to be _no_.

"I did. I was finally able to find a way into the Hokto system."

"But that's a no-fly zone."

"I'm aware of that," Nathan said through gritted teeth. "The debris field in the system is cyclic, and once every three to five years there's a gap big enough for a small starship to get through. Lucky for you, I found a simulation of the debris field on the holocron, and caught the right time to get through." Nathan braced himself for Ry to ask what he found there, but she didn't.

Ry narrowed her eyes at him. " _You_ got into the Hokto system?"

"Yes, you asked me to check out Hokto System Planetary Object 325...remember?" As he said this, Nathan saw a manic light flicker in her yellow eyes. He could almost see her mind gearing up for a mental leap to hyperspace.

"Yalith is in the Hokto system," she said.

"Yalith?"

"Hokto System Planetary Object 743," she said quickly, squaring her shoulders with her usual moxie now. "It's on the holocron, if you ever care to look it up. The Siluans tried to make a paradise there, but the Sith found it and obliterated them. They turned the whole planet into bare rock."

Nathan raised an eyebrow at this. "OK, that's brutal. So?"

"I'm going there now." She grabbed her black denim jacket from the bench beside her and brushed past him on her way to the door.

"No! That's a bad idea," Nathan said quickly, and she looked back over her shoulder at him. "It was tight enough when I got through a few days ago, and the opening's getting narrower," he said. "It would take a real hotshot of a pilot to get through there now."

"I am a real hotshot of a pilot," she snapped and stormed out.

# # #

It was 1300 h back on Ukio when Ry Kyver landed her personal starship on a rocky outcrop of the dead planet Yalith. By the skin of her teeth, she had made it through the debris field in one piece. Stepping out into the harsh, dry air, she breathed deep and looked around: no sky to speak of, only a red-black haze behind bare, rocky hills. Dust and fumes in the air gave the few visible stars a lurid orange cast, and the air smelled vaguely of crushed rock and sulphur. The uneven ground before her was strewn with old bones, bits of broken armour and the burnt-out hilts of light-sabres.

By the dull light of the orange stars, Ry selected a human skull, jawless and hollow-eyed, from among the relics on the ground and using the Force she brought it to hang before her, facing her at eye level. With a soft hiss of pain, she gingerly rolled up her sleeves. Back on Ukio, she hadn't known why she obeyed the dark will that told her to put a knife to her flesh, only that she needed the sense of release it brought her. Now she gave her wounds new meaning: they were her badge of honour, her sign that she was worthy of what she came to Yalith to ask for, her proof that she would stop at nothing.

Baring her lacerated forearms, Ry stretched out her hands, palms up, toward the skull of the ancient Sith lord. "Where is that One? Show me," she demanded. Her voice scraped through the air, low and harsh, but that suited her just fine.

Out of the still air, a thin wind began to blow. Ry screwed her eyes shut against the onslaught of dust and grit that came with it. The dry, dusty air grated against her lungs, but she forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply to being her meditation.

After some time, there was a sound, not heard audibly, but a sensation in the brain, of the sharp _ping_ of a single bell. Opening her eyes, Ry found herself within the skull. She could feel the dry bone of it press against her scalp and form a rigid mask against her face. Through the empty eye sockets, Ry blinked out at the broken, rocky landscape, and found that it swam and blurred before her eyes. But as her vision cleared again, she saw the planet Yalith, not as it was now, but as it had been. She watched as the ancient Siluans – mostly Twi'leks, but many of other species, all wearing the same stone Siluan amulet around their necks - worked from dawn til dusk to turn a desert planet into a place of green fields and lush gardens, and she listened as the strange, haunting chant of their prayers rose and fell around them. But as she watched, blight came and took their work; and after the blight, fire; and after the fire, Sith lords, many in those days before the Rule of Two, howled as they hounded the Siluans to the ground. And after the last of the Siluans had fallen or fled, the Sith lords turned to hack one another in their unsated zeal for malice, until they too were no more. Ry continued to watch, unmoved, until at last the air itself all but forsook the desecration of the planet. Then she found herself looking out again at a dead world from within an old, dry skull.

Slowly, another vision formed, and dark, hazy sky grew sharply black, strewn with a million white stars. Even as in her sleepless dreams, all the star-systems were laid out before her. But now from within the skull of that ancient Sith lord she sensed what before had been obscure: the remnant on Yemer ( _I'll get them later_ ), the many on Alderaan ( _damn Senator Organa! He hid them from me!_ ). Still she searched until she sensed what she came to find. She could see it with crystal clarity: under a purple night sky, a stone house stood on a hillside. At the foot of the hill grew a thick forest. That One was there, down among the trees, or would be when Ry got there.

She didn't know the planet's name. She didn't need to. With knowing beyond knowing she knew its coordinates as clearly as she knew her own name.

The vision broke. Ry found herself again on the bleak, blank world of Yalith, with a skull suspended before her. Taking it in both hands, she kissed it, and then crushed it, letting the fragments fall to the ground. All but one. One she took between her teeth to savour as she set out for her next destination.


	23. In the Dark before Dawn

**The Way of a Siluan, Chapter 23: In the Dark before Dawn**

BBY 14, year five of Imperial rule, about ten hours after the end of chapter 22 and seven hours after the end of chapter 23

" _The way of a Siluan is hard," Varda said flatly. "Are you able to do it?"_

" _I don't know," Eo said, "but I want to try..."_

Outside Ava Kirrin's stone house on the rocky hillside above the forest, Eo stood in the garden, looking up into the purple night sky of the planet Iwaki. She searched the white stars, wondering which of them was Hokto and whether Varda was okay. More than anything, she wished she could see Varda again and tell her that she was right.

Eo wrapped her skinny arms around herself. The too-big grey hand-me-down pants and tunic she got from Devin's wife were thick enough for the fall evening, but she still felt cold and sick and hollow.

Behind her, in the little stone house on the rocky hillside overlooking the forest, the dinner things had been cleared away. Ava Kirrin and his wife were deep in conversation with Devin about the new order of the galaxy: Sith lords and stormtroopers, the end of the Jedi Order, and this Dark Jedi called Ry Kyver who had set out to destroy the Siluans. Eo had tried to sit and shut it all out while pretending to listen, but it was too much. As soon as she politely could, she excused herself to go use the outhouse.

Now, standing out there in the dark of the garden, all she wanted was to stretch out the minutes before courtesy demanded that she go back in to join her hosts. She hoped that by then the conversation would be over. Somehow, when she first heard all this back on Nechako, the shock of the news was so fresh, and the bustle of staying with a real biological family was so intriguing that she didn't have the space of mind to think or to feel her new reality. But on the long flight from Nechako to Iwaki, while the starship was on autopilot and Devin was zonked out asleep with a parent's perennial fatigue, then she had time to feel the weight of it settle over her.

 _The way of a Siluan is hard,_ Varda had told her so many times. _It's one thing to like nonviolence from the quiet of your garden, and another thing to practice it when your enemy is staring you in the face_. Eo meant it every time she said _I want to try_ , but her words sounded so naive now, like something spoken by a child in a fairytale a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Behind her, Eo heard the door slide open and a long column of light was cast out into the dark beside her, throwing the leafy garden into jagged contrasts of light and shadow. She turned to look, and there was Ava Kirrin's big, burly form in the doorway. He stepped out and closed the door behind him, shutting the light in again, and called her name.

"Eo? Eo? Are you out here?"

As her eyes readjusted to the starlight, Eo could see him standing there, looking toward the outhouse on the other side of the garden. For split second, Eo considered crouching down behind a bush and pretending not to be there, but then she heard her own voice quaver, calling out, "I'm here!"

Ava Kirrin looked over and caught her eye, then walked over with his big lumbering gait to stand beside her. For a moment, they both just looked up at the stars.

"Conversation in there was a bit heavy?" Ava Kirrin said.

Eo shrugged, then nodded. There was no point pretending.

As his eyes adjusted to the starlight, Ava Kirrin studied Eo. With her straight black hair and dark eyes and skinny frame, she reminded him of someone he couldn't quite place. What was more important to him, though, was to get a feel for who she was in the Force. But at first, all he could read was that she was scared, scared and troubled, but it didn't take a Force-adept to see that. Even in the faint light, the way she hunched her shoulders and hugged her arms around herself told him as much.

"So you want to be a Siluan?" He'd already asked that over dinner, but with the kids and everyone else at the table, it was hard to take that conversation far.

Eo felt a wave of something almost like pain wash over her. What she wanted hadn't changed, but how could she say she was able to commit herself to such a path in the face of what it might cost her now? She looked down at her feet. "I want to try," she said uncertainly, "but..." She let her words trail off unfinished. Ava Kirrin seemed so big and sure and solid, she felt ashamed to be here asking for training yet feeling these kinds of doubts about herself.

Ava Kirrin sighed and nodded sadly. He couldn't read Eo's thoughts, but he was reading her feelings more and more clearly, and her thoughts he could guess. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and fingered the rough stone that hung on a short cord around his neck. It was years now since he took his vows and began to wear that stone that marked him as a Siluan, but he was painfully aware that the questions he sensed in Eo were also his own: if, when, this Dark Jedi found him, his very biology would demand that he defend himself. Love, no, plain old decency would demand that he defend others, and then how could he say that he would keep his vow of nonviolence? How could he hope to take the way of a Siluan and love even his enemy when instinct itself demanded fear and anger and hate?

But to be strong for Eo's sake, he decided to tell her what he kept telling himself. "The way of a Siluan is hard in its own way, but so is the path of anyone who chooses to seek the Light. Whether we take the way of a Siluan or not, we'll all have to answer whether we're really willing to accept the challenge of our calling." Ava Kirrin's voice sounded forced and overconfident in his own ears, and he only wished he knew how to change that.

"Yes," Eo said, without looking up. Ava Kirrin knew that _yes_. It was the _yes_ of someone who had learned compliance, not the _yes_ of someone who spoke from their own conviction.

"It's OK to be afraid," Ava Kirrin said, trying again to connect with her. "But that's why we say _Yet shall the Light be unbroken_ , so that we can find the strength to face these things."

"Yes," Eo said again, and Ava Kirrin sighed, wondering whether she might rather just be left alone. But he didn't sense a _go away_ in her. The longer he paid attention to what he was sensing in her through the Force, the more he felt that the fear in her was just mashed on top of what she really wanted, that beneath it she was rooted and grounded, unshakable in a way that few people were. _Maybe she just needs to know her own mind_ , he thought.

"If you're not sure this is right for you, you don't have to do it," Ava Kirrin said, trying against his natural bent to keep his words gentle. "The way of a Siluan isn't normative for everyone; there are other ways to seek the Light, other ways to live a good life if you want. We'll be happy for you to stay, but if you'd rather you can go back with Devin in the morning. Or even if you want to stay and learn from us for a while, you still have time to change your mind. You're what, eighteen now?"

"Seventeen," Eo said.

"You can't take your vows until you're at least twenty-one anyways, so you have four years or more to change your mind."

In the dark under the stars, Eo tilted her head to one side, weighing this. When Ava Kirrin put it that way, she felt with crystal clarity that her basic desire hadn't changed. She was still drawn to this simple yet demanding way of life; she felt most wholly well and truly herself in it. To hang back from the calling she felt would itself be a kind of death. Better to live with fear than with regret, she felt.

"No, I want to try," Eo said, more firmly this time. "It's just that I can't say I won't fail."

Ava Kirrin shrugged. "Neither can I," he said, looking down at her standing there beside him.

Hearing the catch in his voice, Eo stopped staring at the ground and looked up. She was surprised to see the lines of his face show that he questioned himself just as much as she did.

"Do you remember from the sayings of Ava Yelena, _Though I may die, yet shall the Light be unbroken_?" Ava Kirrin said.

Eo nodded. The words sent a shiver up her spine.

"Perhaps what we need now is to say, _Though I may fail, yet shall the Light be unbroken_. More than nonviolence or any of that, this is what it means to be a Siluan: to trust that whether we live or die, whether we succeed or fail, _yet shall the Light be unbroken_." As he said this, Ava Kirrin was painfully aware that the young man he once was, even a part of the man he was now, would argue back that nothing in reality evidenced any final triumph of the Light, and that if one held any such belief, then why was there any need to make any effort to see Light prevail over Darkness at all?

But beside him, Eo let her breath out slowly and closed her eyes. She nodded. Ava Kirrin could see the tension melt out of her shoulders, and sense the fear wash out of her. "Thank you," she said quietly.

Ava Kirrin smiled down at Eo, the way a master may smile at a novice. _She will do well_ , he thought, but then caught his breath at a brief and sudden vision in the Force: he saw not a young woman of seventeen, but an old woman nearly seventy, bent and wrinkled but her eyes were bright. She wore the stone amulet of the Siluans around her neck and bore in her hand the staff of an abbess. _She will do well indeed!_ he told himself.

"Tomorrow we will begin your training in earnest, then," Ava Kirrin said. "But for now, you've had a long day. Please get some sleep."

With one last look at the stars, Eo followed him back inside. But Ava Kirrin decided not spoil his new apprentice by saying anything about the vision to her. Anger was the great enemy of the Jedi, but pride was the undoing of a Siluan.

# # #

Eo opened her eyes and found herself wide awake, but unsure where she was. She lay still for a while on a soft and unfamiliar bed, looking around in the dim glimmer of starlight that came through the window above her, listening to the small night-sounds and sensing the air, and then remembered: she was in Ava Kirrin's house, on Iwaki. She and Devin had arrived there the evening before, and after her talk with Ava Kirrin, they were each given a cot to spend the night.

Sleep did not seem likely to return, so Eo got up. She quietly felt her way up out of the house and went out into the garden.

A crescent moon hung over her now, and in its light, she could see that Ava Kirrin's garden wasn't like the tangle that she and Varda kept on Hokto. It was laid out in strict blocks, mostly of some massive vegetable with a ring of huge round leaves around a massive bulbous head, but there was also a grass-like plant with big globular seed heads and a squat, bushy plant hilled up in tidy rows.

Eo felt calm now, and resolute. A cool wind brushed her cheek, and she looked up to see the white fluff of some sort of thistle-seeds catch the bluish moonlight as the breeze bore then away over the forest to the east. Eo felt a strange desire to follow them but didn't. What she wanted most was to sit and feel the feel of this place. Iwaki could never be what Hokto was to her, nor could it be what she'd hoped the monastery on Yemer would be, but after her talk with Ava Kirrin, she felt she could put down roots here. It would be hard, she knew, to learn to live at peace with the fear of this Dark Jedi always hanging over her, but as Varda would have said, _This is your training._ Eo smiled sadly as the image of the old hermit came to mind. But perhaps Varda would be glad that she was here. Back on Hokto, Eo thought, she was still a child; here, she would grow up and learn to face the harsh realities of the galaxy.

Eo wandered down along the path between the blocks of vegetables, looking for a good place to sit, but just then she heard a swoosh of wings. She took a step back, startled: a big night-bird, nearly knee-high, landed on the ground in front of her. With a rustle of feathers, it folded its dark wings and turned its flat white face toward her. Its hooked beak gleamed in the moonlight. Eo stood perfectly still, and the bird looked her in the eye with something very much like intelligence. _Come,_ it seemed to say in one low hoot. Eo watched it fly off to perch on top of the outhouse and look back at her. _Come,_ it seemed to say, _now!_

Eo looked back at the stone house. Every window was dark, everyone was asleep. She didn't suppose anyone would notice if she stayed out for a while. Back on Hokto, she used to do this if she couldn't sleep. She would follow the voice of the tree-frogs out into the forest and sit by the lake and watch fish jump in the moonlight. She learned many things that way, watching and listening to the voices of the night creatures. Perhaps this bird, too, had something to teach her about Iwaki.

Eo followed the bird through the garden and down the hill to edge of the forest below, where a little path dipped down a steep bank and then wound its way under the feathery branches of resinous trees and through a thick undergrowth of some kind of leatherleaf.

She had taken this path with Devin earlier when he landed the starship in the flat field beyond the forest. She couldn't see the path in the dark under the trees, but five years on Hokto had taught her what she never learned in the Jedi Temple: how to sense the life of the trees and plants around her and so find the way through them. And she knew her woodcraft. She struck her hands together to ward off predators, the way Varda had taught her to do on Hokto, and stepped into the dark of the forest.

By Force-feel and careful attention to the way the moonlight reflected off the shiny leaves of the undergrowth, Eo made her way to the far side of the forest, where she could just see the moonlight shining on the open field beyond the trees. Ahead of her, the bird called out to her again in a series of low notes as it stopped on a log in a little clearing. Standing quietly all around was a host of mushrooms, which gave off a vivid green bioluminescence. The bird hooted at Eo again.

"Is this why you brought me here?" she asked, but with a swoosh of wings, the bird flew away.

The bird didn't seem to mean for her to follow, so Eo knelt on the damp ground to look at the strange fungi, and noticed a trail of insects, ant-like, walking in orderly lines to and from the mushrooms, diligently scraping something sticky from the underside of the mushroom cap before joining the returning march. Eo remembered Varda telling her about something like this, about insects that cultivate fungi the way so-called sentient species cultivate other crops. She dug her fingers into the crumbly leaf-mould, wondering whether this species, like the mushrooms on Hokto, knew how to join to the roots of the trees and bind the forest together.

With her fingers in the cool damp of the ground, Eo could focus and begin to feel something of the life of the fungi stretching out under the leaf litter. She could even sense the mushrooms' connection to the life of the trees around her, and she felt a surge of awe and gladness for it. But as she knelt there, looking, feeling, listening, another sense came to her through the fungi. It reminded her of something else Varda had told her: that plants, in their own way, sense danger, and send out signals to warn each other.

Eo quickly stood up, feeling uneasy. She held her breath and listened, but she heard only the rhythmic chirping of some host of insects in the field beyond the forest. She clapped her hands together again, then waited, but heard nothing. The stillness did not comfort her.

She turned to go back up the path, but then came up against a dense patch of leatherleaf. Her heart started pounding as the realization came over her: in her uneasy state of mind, she couldn't use the Force to feel her way through the trees. She forced herself to breathe, to calm down. She turned back and headed again for another gap that looked like it might be the path.

Wild things, she knew, would avoid her if they knew she was there. She clapped her hands together sharply again, and listened.

A twig snapped, and a woman's voice laughed softly. Eo froze. Fear crept up her spine with cold fingers.

"Let there be Light!" a woman's voice said sarcastically, and with a sharp click, the harsh light of an electric lantern seared Eo's eyes. She held up her hand and squinted through her fingers, too stunned to run, trapped in the unexpected brightness.

"So you're that One? You? You're a little twig!" The woman cracked her knuckles, but to Eo, it sounded like more twigs snapping.

What One? Eo was baffled.

"Anyways, I found you," the woman said, with a note of triumph.

"Who are you?" Eo asked, but saw only the too-bright lantern held up to her face.

"You tell me," the woman said.

The lantern dimmed slightly and was lowered. Eo blinked to adjust her eyes, and saw a woman in a black denim jacket and dark jeans, with dark hair pulled back from her face. She haggard beyond her age, unhumanly grey. Her yellow eyes gleamed in the lantern-light.

Eo's mouth went dry. She wasn't good at reading people through the Force, but this person was practically broadcasting herself. "You're Ry Kyver," Eo said quietly.

"And you are that One."

Eo shook her head, still confused, but gathered herself. "You were a Jedi once," she said, more boldly now, too boldly perhaps. "We need you to come back, while you can."

Ry didn't answer, but snickered softly. Eo caught the gleam in the Dark Jedi's eye and realized all at once that she needed to run. She took a step back and then sprang away from the lantern's harsh circle of light.

But Ry was expecting this. She reached out her free hand in the air and with grasping fingers jerked Eo back, yet without touching her.

"Let me go!" Eo yelled, and clawed against Ry's Force-grip.

Ry grinned and held the lantern up a little higher. "Scream, little One!" she said. "Yell while you can! No one will come." She liked this part _._ She liked to taunt these people who thought they could hold on to the Light. _Fear is the path to the dark side._ So Yoda had taught her back when she was a Jedi youngling in the Temple. _Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering._ So Eo's reaction was a step in the right direction.

Kicking and screaming, with her heart pounding against her chest and blood throbbing in her ears, Eo did feel a storm of fear and anger and hate rise up and gather strength within her. And that storm was itself strength, it was power, power to wield the Force, to play Dark against Dark and so have some hope of escape.

But not every tree bent by the wind breaks, and the roots Eo had put down in the Temple and in the garden were not shaken. Out of that unbroken place within her, Eo stopped her thrashing and took a deep breath. With a single exhale, she blew the storm away.

She was still now, standing there in Ry's unyielding Force-grip. In that moment of stillness, before Ry could react, Eo knew as clearly as she had known as a child in the Temple: _I want to have the Light within me. I want it more than anything._ But now, even with this Dark Jedi glaring at her, she knew that the only Light she would find for herself was the Light she was willing to share with Ry Kyver.

Ry saw Eo's face soften, and it angered her. She tightened her Force-grip so hard that Eo cried out.

But now Eo could separate the will to live from the will to hate. With one last burst of energy, she pushed back against Ry's hold on her. Very deliberately, she let out one last piercing scream, one last call for help.

For months to come, Ava Kirrin would wake up in a cold sweat, thinking that he heard Eo cry out, but the truth was that he never heard it. No one did. The forest muffled her voice, and back at the house, heavy sleep and stone walls blocked out what was left to be heard.

Ry laughed as Eo struggled to get away. She let the lantern in her left hand hang at her side, but kept the right stretched out to hold Eo in place. "You can't run, and you can't hide," she said. "No one is coming for you, so your life is mine to take." She set the lantern down on the ground.

Hanging limp in Ry's Force-grip, with her breath and strength spent, Eo looked at Ry, and looked at the tall trees standing silent and unmoved around them, and understood the situation. _Though I may die..._ the words crystallized in her mind. "Yet shall the Light be unbroken," she finished quietly. But she saw Ry reach for something in her belt. She wondered for the first time what it was like to be run through by a light-sabre, and her fear came flooding back. She screwed her eyes shut.

Ry Kyver wondered afterwards whether things would have been different if she hadn't let Eo know she was there in the first place, if she had just drawn her blaster and dropped Eo where she stood before the girl even knew what was happening. Then again, she wondered later what would have happened instead if she'd played Eo out longer and made sure that her will toward the Light was truly broken first. But without the benefit of hindsight, Ry felt that she'd had a little fun, and she had other things to do. So when she heard Eo's words and saw her brace herself, she decided it was time to make her point.

"That's so not going to work for you," Ry said, and twisted her clenched hands in the air.

Under Eo's cry of pain was the dull crunch of bone and cartilage. When Ry opened her fingers, Eo fell to the ground. Her body twitched a few times and then didn't move again.

Ry smiled and wiped her hands on the sides of her black denim jacket. _Mission accomplished,_ she thought, and poked Eo's twisted form with the toe of her boot.

Yet even as she did so, the lantern she'd set on the ground shattered and went out, but all around her, the forest beheld a flash of light. Ry instinctively raised her arm to shield her eyes, but a blinding white pain seared her mind. A wave of nausea washed over her, and her knees gave way. She found herself lying on the ground, clutching at the pain in her side and gasping for breath. Her mind reeled in agony.

She lay there until night passed and dawn's red light bled through the trees. Then suddenly there was a sharp _thwack_ in the distance. _Thwack!_ The sound rang out again. Hearing it, Ry leapt up and fled into the forest like a wild thing.


	24. The Choices of Ava Kirrin

**Welcome to chapter 24!**

This is the final chapter in Part I. I'll include some notes about Part II at the end.

A reader asked about the word "Ava." This is a title given to Siluan Elders.

 **The Way of a Siluan, chapter 24: The Choices of Ava Kirrin**

BBY 14, year five of Imperial rule, following immediately after chapter 23

 _Thwack!_ Ava Kirrin's axe fell again and the block of wood split in two. Outside his little stone house, it was just getting light. He was up before dawn, as usual, and chopping wood for the fire to cook their meal. Of his two guests, Devin was already up but Eo hadn't appeared yet. Ava Kirrin was a bit surprised at that. He had knocked on the wall beside the curtain over the place where she slept to see whether she could come for morning meditation, but there was no response. _She must be tired, it was a long flight yesterday,_ he thought, but resolved to be strict with his new apprentice starting tomorrow.

Ava Kirrin bent down to set the next piece of wood in place, and behind him, he heard a swoosh of wings. He turned to see the owl land on the ground beside him. She folded her dark wings and blinked at him with those big yellow eyes in her round white face.

"Thadra, it's strange for you to be out at this hour," Ava Kirrin said to her. "Do you have news for me?" He felt uneasy. The owls never came to him in daylight unless they had news, and news was usually bad.

But the owl tensed, then gathered herself and flew off again. Behind him, Ava Kirrin heard the pounding of small feet, and his twelve-year-old son Yan went tearing past him.

"Yan!" Ava Kirrin barked. "Where are you going? I want you back in time for breakfast!"

"Yes, Dad!" Yan's voice trailed off as he ran down the hill toward the forest.

Ava Kirrin sighed. Yan might or might not be back in time for breakfast. Ava Kirrin hoped that Eo would be a good influence on these unruly children of his.

Ava Kirrin let his mind melt back into the rhythmic thud of the axe against a new block of wood, but Yan came running back not long after.

"Dad," he said, panting, "there's a weird lady down there by the creek. Can you come and see?"

Ava Kirrin scowled, not at Yan, but wondering. He didn't have to wonder long. Yan led him down the hill and into the forest, but turned off the main path going east to the open field and went instead south toward the creek.

There near the stream-bank sat a woman, her back to the water and her hands over her ears. She had dark hair and wore a black denim jacket. She was pale and sickly looking, staring blankly ahead and blinking like some night-creature suddenly exposed to the day. As soon as she saw Ava Kirrin, she screamed and looked as if she was about to jump up and run.

"Please, don't run!" Ava Kirrin said quickly. "We can help you."

The woman, whose breath was still quick and shallow, sat down again at the sound of Ava Kirrin's voice, but she hugged her knees to herself and watched him suspiciously.

Ava Kirrin made a point to relax his posture and silently reached out to her through the Force. He watched as she gradually relaxed, but not completely. It didn't take a Force-user to tell that she was in shock, and more or less out of her mind.

Ava Kirrin crouched down in front of her. "Are you hurt?" he asked gently. "What happened to you?"

The woman swallowed. "That One, she broke me," she said quietly.

"Which one? What happened?"

"I killed her," the woman said flatly, as if this was a normal thing to do. Then she moaned at her own pain and buried her head in her knees.

Ava Kirrin drew in a sharp breath and stood up. "Yan, go and check on your sister."

"She's with mom. They went over the creek to pick berries."

"I said GO and CHECK."

Yan spread his arms out to balance on the bigger rocks to cross the creek, then ran off into the bush on the other side. Ava Kirrin sat on the ground not far from his unexpected guest. The rising sun caught the feathery branches of the trees high above them, but down there on the damp ground they were still in shadow.

"Who was the girl?" Ava Kirrin asked, trying to keep the aggression out of his voice.

No response.

"Who are you?"

No answer.

"She's here!" Yan called out from the other side of the creek.

"Is your mom there too?"

"Yes!" his wife called back and appeared on the other side of the creek with a basket full of berries in her arms and their daughter beside her.

Ava Kirrin's heart leapt and Ava Kirrin's heart sank. "Have you seen Eo this morning?"

His wife shook her head. "She wasn't in her bed, so I thought she was with you."

"Can you go find her? She might be hurt." Ava Kirrin's heart started pounding as he asked. He watched his wife and kids cross the creek, casting worried glances at the woman sitting on the ground with her face hidden against her bent knees. As soon as his family had gone, he crouched down on the ground in front of her again.

"Who are you?" he asked again.

At last, she looked up. "Ry Kyver," she said and shuddered, then hid her face again.

At that name, every hair on the back of Ava Kirrin's neck stood on end. This was not a person who deserved to live.

As a Siluan, Ava Kirrin carried no weapon, but that didn't stop him from seeing the jagged rocks along the stream. It would be easy. With her sitting there bent over in that munted state of mind, she wouldn't even see it coming. As he stood up and reached for the nearest rock, in his mind he could already feel the weight of it in his hand, feel its sharp edges under his fingers. He could already hear her skull crack and feel bone give way to rock.

But even as he touched the cold stone, another thought stopped him: this was not the vow he had taken. It was obvious that she was in shock. Something had broken her. To bash in someone who was sitting there vulnerable was no way to acquire Light within him.

Ava Kirrin sighed and shook his head. He slumped back down on the ground and pinched the space between his eyes between thumb and forefinger. He'd known when he took his vows that the way of a Siluan wasn't easy, but why did it have to be so damned hard?

Another thought gnawed its way back into his consciousness: Eo. The nearest settlement was thirty kilometres away. In her current state of mind, Ry Kyver could not possibly have flown a starship or driven a speeder to get to where she was now. Whatever she had done and whatever had happened to her had happened nearby. Ava Kirrin tried to calm his thoughts so that he could hear what the trees had to say, or feel some echo in the Force of what had been, but his mind was in disarray.

Beside him, Ry Kyver coughed, then hacked up some kind of phlegm and spat it on the ground. Ava Kirrin's stomach lurched. He made a face and turned his head away in disgust. But whatever he felt towards this person, whatever she had done, he knew what he had to do.

Just then he heard footsteps come along the path through the forest. It was Yan, with Devin behind him. Yan looked scared and Devin's face was drawn.

"Ava Kirrin, we found Eo," Devin began, but his voice broke. The words, spoken and unspoken, struck Ava Kirrin like a blow to the head.

At the mention of Eo's name, Ry looked up and caught Devin's eye. Both faces showed a flash of recognition. In an instant, Devin had his blaster pointed at Ry Kyver's head.

"Devin, no!" Ava Kirrin shouted.

Devin was a good shot, and it was close range, but Ava Kirrin was a Jedi once himself. The moment Devin pulled the trigger, Ava Kirrin reached out his hand, and the shot went wide.

Devin's face twisted with shame and anger, and he turned his back to Ava Kirrin.

Next down the path came Ava Kirrin's wife, Ava Wyth, and their daughter Sophie. With teary eyes, Ava Wyth looked around at the group. Her voice was hoarse. "I've marked out the place for the grave," she said, "but perhaps someone else could dig while I gather the herbs."

"I'll go," Devin said quickly, and walked away.

"Yan, Sophie, please go help him," Ava Kirrin said. With a worried glance back at the stranger sitting on the ground, the two kids ran after Devin, who didn't look back or acknowledge their father in any way.

Ava Kirrin and his wife exchanged looks. "I'll bring the stones," he said.

His wife saw the look on his face and went and put her arms around him. She knew the hopes he'd had for Eo.

With his wife living and breathing against him, Ava Kirrin could feel himself start shaking at the release of his tension. When he'd calmed down and they'd let each other go, his wife studied him again.

"Devin was angry because you wouldn't let him..." she let her voice trail off and motioned with her head to Ry, who had her face down against her knees again and was wrapping her arms around herself as if to shut them all out. Ava Wyth hadn't seen her husband deflect the blaster shot, but she'd heard the gun go off and seen the blaster in Devin's hand. Body language told her the rest.

Ava Kirrin bit his lip and nodded.

" _Shikatta ga nai_ ," his wife said in the language of their home planet. _There's nothing else you could have done._

Ava Kirrin's face twisted. It hardly seemed right, it hardly seemed fair to just let someone like Ry Kyver go. But they couldn't kill her, they had no way to contain her, and he knew the local authorities well enough that if he were to hand her over to them, he might as well kill her himself.

" _Shikatta ga nai_ ," his wife said again, guessing his thoughts. "We can check on her again after the funeral."

Ava Kirrin closed his eyes and nodded. His wife kissed him. "I marked out the grave in the field near the edge of the forest. I'll meet you there with the herbs," she said, and then squeezed his hand before she went off back up the path through the forest.

Ava Kirrin was left alone with his thoughts, and with Ry Kyver. It was too much. He turned his back to her and buried his face in his hands.

 _No!_ he thought. _No! No!_ Eo was young, she was focused and disciplined and dedicated. The Siluans were going to need her and hundreds more like her if they were ever to recover from what Ry Kyver had done to them. And she had a great future. He'd seen it, hadn't he?

Ava Kirrin paced up and down beside the creek. _The future is always changing_. As cruelly stoic as the words sounded now, so the Jedi taught. And Force-visions were notoriously difficult to interpret wisely. Whatever he had seen in his vision, whatever the future had been, it wasn't true now. What was unchanging and impossible to misinterpret was the fact that he needed to gather those stones to cover the grave and go serve a funeral for the young woman who should have been his new apprentice.

It was all surreal in a sick sort of way that sat in his gut. It should be that he was still back at the house. It should be that he'd finish chopping firewood, and they would have breakfast. It should be that Eo would wake up and come to join them, apologizing for being up late. _No, no_ , he would say, _you must be tired, you had a long flight yesterday._ It should be that after eating they would go out and harvest the next row of potatoes, and then when the sun reached its zenith he would teach her the words for the noonday chant.

When Ava Kirrin blinked he felt tears trickle down his face.

The feathery branches of the blue-green trees above him stirred and tossed in the wind. The creek clattered over the rocks, the same as always. Ava Kirrin looked over at Ry, who was still sitting there with her face buried against her bent knees, still hugging her legs to herself. He stood and studied her.

With the busyness of family life, it always took Ava Kirrin a little time to tune in fully to anyone's Force-signature. He could tell now that the Dark in Ry was unmistakable. But that energy was like the sound of a gong that had been struck but was being struck no more. Was that what her being broken meant?

Why Eo's death would have that effect on Ry when thousands of other good people made no such impression on her he could not begin to understand. But whatever danger Ry was or wasn't at this point, he couldn't kill her, and he had no way to contain her. He would have to just let her go.

Ava Kirrin shook his head and walked a few steps over to the creek. He bent down and with a grunt, he hoisted up a huge stone, wet and dripping, from the streambed. At that moment, Ry happened to look up at him with distant dis-focus in her eyes.

She had no remorse. That much was clear.

Ava Kirrin adjusted his grip on the rock. It was going to take multiple trips to get enough to cover the grave, even if he only took the biggest stones. _She should be made he help,_ he thought. _She should feel the weight of what she's done._

As if she sensed his thoughts, Ry glared at him. "Go away and don't look at me," she said, then hugged her legs to herself all the more tightly and buried her face in her knees again.

Ava Kirrin felt the heavy rock strain against his arms and shoulders. _I saved you, and that's all you can say?_ he wanted to yell at her. It occurred to him again that there were other uses for that rock beside making a grave-stone of it, but he shook his head. He didn't want to live with a broken vow weighing on his shoulders either.

With that thought, Ava Kirrin adjusted his grip on the rock and went off into the forest to find the others.

# # #

North of Ava Kirrin's house, the rocky hillside was bathed in the last red-gold light of day. As Ava Kirrin pushed his way up the narrow switch-back trail to the peak, he relished the burn in his lungs and the strain in his legs. The exertion made him feel strong, it made him feel alive. He needed that after serving a funeral for someone so young.

But he climbed the hill not for solace, but for ceremony. He wanted to chant the final prayers of the death-day from the summit under the light of the first stars.

That morning Ava Kirrin and his family and Devin buried Eo. She had not yet taken her vows, and so the funeral was the same as the simple burial service Ava Kirrin did for Devin's mom five years earlier. Devin went home soon after, but Ava Kirrin and his family kept vigil the way Siluans did in their monasteries. While they sat by the grave, even Ava Kirrin's unruly children were solemn. "I never felt such peace by a graveside," his wife said as they walked back to the house together for a meal afterwards.

On the hillside above him, the gold glow faded to grey, but with each step, Ava Kirrin carried that peace within him. It made him feel connected to everything: to the moss and the lichens and straggly bushes that clung to the rock face above him, to the forest and the field beyond it, and to his family back in the house and even to the ground he walked.

With that thought, Ava Kirrin came huffing and puffing to a level part of the path that went across the top of a buttress just below the summit. When he looked up, he froze in his tracks. The rocky outcrop had been hiding from view a lone figure standing at the peak: Ry Kyver.

She was not, as he had come to do, looking out to the far mountains where the sun had set. She had her back to him, and her gaze was pointed downwards to the sheer thirty-metre drop that ended in jagged rocks that jutted out all down the far side of the hill.

 _I hope she really does jump,_ a thought said in his mind. But Ava Kirrin shook his head. That thought might speak, but he wasn't going to listen. He stood quietly and studied Ry.

Earlier that day when Ava Kirrin encountered Ry Kyver by the creek, he couldn't fathom why Eo's death would have such an effect on her when so many other good people didn't. But as he kept vigil, he felt that he could begin to understand.

 _For each one person is three, and the three are one person: the body and the essence and the energies._

 _Death is the great divider: the body returns to the ground that bore it, the essence returns to the Force that enlivened it, and for good or for ill, the energies go on in the galaxy._

 _In life, therefore, acquire Light within you, that in death your energies may enliven those who remain._

These words, from The Sayings of Ava Mannath, haunted Ava Kirrin's thoughts that day. For a Siluan, two things were all-important: to acquire Light within, and to be prepared to share that Light in one's death.

Ava Kirrin couldn't be sure, but he could guess that when Ry Kyver came for the other Siluans, they did what he would have done: they focused their intentions so that their final energies would strengthen the survivors, or would heal the planet from the destruction that their persecutor would leave in her wake. But Eo had no such attachments to a place or to a community. Everything he could sense as he sat by her grave told Ava Kirrin that Eo's intention was simply to share her Light with Ry Kyver.

For Ava Kirrin, even the afterglow of Eo's last energies was life and peace. But no one could fully control the effect of their energies after their death. For someone who had so steeped herself in Darkness, Light meant only bitter pain and sheer terror. No wonder, Ava Kirrin thought, Ry Kyver would say, _She broke me._

 _She deserves it,_ his thought said, but he shook his head and touched the stone that hung at his neck. No, Eo had found her victory, now he needed to find his. He faked a cough, and Ry turned and saw him.

"Oh, it's you," she said flatly.

 _At least,_ Ava Kirrin thought, _she sounds more coherent now._

Ry walked carefully down from the rocky peak and chose a narrow flat spot where she could stand near Ava Kirrin but still look down on him. "So I guess you think I'm the bad one here," she said.

Ava Kirrin's jaw hung open for a moment while he grasped for some reply to this. "Your words, not mine," he said at last.

"She broke me. Do you think that's fair?" Ry held her hand out over a loose rock on the ground. It wobbled but didn't move. She screamed with frustration and booted the rock down the hill.

Ava Kirrin watched it crash through the bushes below them. 'Broken,' he realized, meant far more than he'd thought.

When he turned back to her, Ry was standing there with her arms folded across her chest, waiting for him to give some answer.

"Sometimes it's good to be broken," he said.

"What?" she spat.

Ava Kirrin didn't flinch, and continued calmly, "If you're broken, you can be re-made. And if you are going to be re-made, you can choose: do you want to be re-made in the Dark, or in the Light?" He held her gaze; he wasn't about to let her stare him down.

Ry looked away angrily. "And what good is that supposed to do me? I can't go back to Lord Vader like this, but if I don't report to him I'm as good as dead."

"Are you looking for sympathy, or for advice?" Ava Kirrin asked archly.

"You seem to think you know what's good for people, so you tell me," Ry shot back and glared at him.

Ava Kirrin laughed. "Good one," he said. "What I'll offer you is neither, just this: I can't have you stay here, but if you go to the old cantina on Takodana and ask the proprietor for the Gunma family, one of them can take you to my friend, Ava Gerges. He'll know how to help you - if you want that."

"Where is he? I'm enough of a pilot to fly there myself."

"If you aren't going to report back this Lord Vader of yours, I think you'll find that getting through Imperial checkpoints is a little more difficult from now on. And I don't want Imperial authorities to have a record of your going there. If you go to Takodana first, there's at least a chance that they'll lose your trail."

Ry narrowed her eyes at him. "You Siluans!" she said. "You talk about Light, but you don't even know justice."

Ava Kirrin folded his arms across his chest to match her stance. "If I sought what people call justice, what would we gain by it?"

"So you're just going to let me go." Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

Ava Kirrin studied Ry in the fading light. She had no remorse. Such sorrow as she felt was regret at her loss of power and self-pity over having been broken.

But what gave him hope was that alongside her darkened Force-signature, another energy went with her now. It draped over her like a veil, it wrapped around her like a blanket to ward off the cold. It was the same energy he had sensed in Eo when she spoke with him almost one rotation earlier, when she let go of her fear and said _I want to try_.

He couldn't be sure that Ry would ever understand what a gift she had received, or whether she would ever feel the effects he felt from the energy that Eo had left with her, but Ava Kirrin found it hard to doubt that there was at least some hope for Ry Kyver in it.

"Yes," Ava Kirrin said. "I think you'll find your way."

Ry glared at him. "Idiot!" she hissed, and then stormed past him.

Ava Kirrin turned and watched her disappear down the hill into the dusk. He wondered what would come of this choice of his, for good or for ill. Not that he was worried about Ava Gerges; the Gunma clan would see to that.

By the time he'd finished chanting the prayers he'd come to say, Ava Kirrin saw a little starship lift off above the trees. He couldn't help but think that no matter what path Ry Kyver chose now, she still left a wake of destruction behind her. Without their monasteries, the Siluans were decimated, scattered and isolated. Except for Ava Gerges, Ava Kirrin didn't even know of any other Siluans who were left. And by Devin's account, Ry Kyver's agricultural policy meant that the planets most relied on to feed the galaxy were being slowly poisoned. The Imperial machine would grind on with or without her, and what hope was there against that?

The starship sped off south toward the mountains. Ava Kirrin shook his head. Thoughts, he knew, reverberated through the Force, and if there was to be any hope for her, the last thing Ry Kyver needed now was his pessimism. He gathered himself to focus, and then sent a pulse of better energy to help her on her way.

"May the Force be with you," he said to the speck that was the starship. There was a flash of light in the darkening sky, and he knew she'd made the leap to hyperspace.

# # #

In the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, the Emperor gripped the arms of his great throne and glared down at his apprentice with heavy-lidded yellow eyes. As Vader bowed before him, prostrating himself to the floor, the Emperor did not wait for Vader to rise before he spoke to him.

"Vader, what has become of Ms. Kyver?" the Emperor asked with a serrated edge to his voice.

In his mind, Vader reeled off a string of Huttese curses. _How in this blasted galaxy should I know? And why should I care?_ he thought, but he could see that his master was in a dangerous mood, so he spoke calmly. "Less than thirty-six hours ago," he said through even breath, "I spoke with her on Ukio. At that time, she was well."

With his eyes, the Emperor sifted his apprentice. _Liar!_ he had wanted to snarl at him, but he could see now that what Vader had said was true: he knew only what he had said and no more.

But the Emperor could not admit the truth to his apprentice. Just hours earlier, he had watched through the Force as Ry Kyver indeed found that One whom he had prophesied and extinguished her.

That should have been his moment of triumph. After all, it was he who chose her, he who found her when the Jedi left her to rot in the AgriCorps. It was he who had prophesied the rising of that One, and he who foretold the power that Ry Kyver would attain by destroying her. This should have been his moment to gloat in his underling's newfound power – and by extension, his own. But no. Even at the moment in which he sensed her power rise, she was hidden from him. A veil covered her and now, however much he searched for her through the Force, he could not find her.

"You will seek her, Vader, and bring her to me," he hissed.

Behind his mask, a muscle twitched in Vader's jaw. "Do you still want her alive?" His question came with a tinge of sarcasm.

The Emperor's only answer was a bolt of Force-lightning that struck the floor only ten centimetres from Vader's feet. Vader took one look at his master's wrathful face and fled.

With Vader gone, the Emperor glowered into the emptiness around him. It could not be. It should not be. He'd consulted his holocrons, but they gave him no answer. His mind had swept the galaxy through the Force, but found nothing.

It was no use. She was hidden from him, and he could not find her.

Exhausted, the Emperor sank back into his throne and his mind finally admitted the thought he'd held at bay: _something has happened that I did not foresee._

 **Credits**

"The future is always changing" quote is actually by Richelle Mead.

 **~ End of Part I ~**

Thank you for reading Part I of _The Way of a Siluan_. I will be taking a break to finish a rough draft of Part II, which will hopefully be ready to share sooner rather than later in 2019. If you would like to know when Part II is released, please make sure to follow this story. You can also send me an email at heatherxenia over on gmail and I can let you know when the first chapter of Part II is ready. (Please include a relevant subject line – and no attachments - if you contact me by email.)

Many many thanks to those who offered reviews and other feedback or critique. It's most appreciated! I'd like to make special mention of Chocolate Teapot for more than once granting my request for critical feedback.

If you've read this far, please do send a message or leave a review with your thoughts! When I'm undecided between options for what to include in this story or not, sometimes it's knowing what readers enjoy that helps me decide what gets cut from a draft and what makes it onto this site.

Speaking of critique, please do share your critique or feedback on this chapter so that I can make an improved version for future readers.

In answer to a reader's question, Part II will continue to focus on the OCs presented in Part I, but there will be more interaction with canonical characters. In particular, I'm planning a subplot with Ahsoka Tano, along with appearances by other characters/references from _Star Wars: Clone Wars_ , _Star Wars: Rebels_ , _The Force Awakens,_ and the _Ahsok_ a novel. Not all readers are familiar with the books or animated series of the Star Wars canon, so I will be writing so as to make each character accessible and engaging regardless of whether you've met them in canon before.

Part II will be the story of how, out of the disparate characters who remain, an offshoot of the Jedi AgriCorps rises up to play its part in the struggle against the Empire. It will also be the story of how the Emperor's prophesy is and isn't fulfilled as Ry Kyver finds a way forward after her encounter with Eo.


	25. The hunter, the hunted

**Welcome to Part II!**

Killing Eo broke Ry Kyver. All but unable to wield the power of the Force, she does not dare return to face Vader, much less the Emperor.

What follows is the story of how, in seeking a way forward, Ry becomes Devin's unexpected and unwelcome ally, and why Varda does all she can to give Ry a chance at redemption, up to a point.

We'll also get a peek at what happens to Ava Kirrin and intersect with Ahsoka Tano and a few other canonical characters.

But first, many thanks to...

... **Ross** , whom I know from the farmers market. Thank you, Ross, for encouraging me to write, and especially for recommending **Lisa Cron** 's _**Story Genius**_ **.** Rest in peace, Ross. I miss you.

... **ME Thomas** , author of **_Confessions of a Sociopath_** _,_ for writing back in answer to a few questions I had after reading her book to try to decide whether or not to portray Ry Kyver as clinically sociopathic. The answer seems to be _no,_ but the reasons why were still interesting. I highly recommend _Confessions of a Sociopath_ for a look into the life of a female sociopath by someone who is one.

...FanFiction author **Sensey** for suggesting and working together to create a crossover with _**Shaak and Maris: a Star Wars Story**_ , which overlaps the time period of the chapters that lie ahead. I'll flag the crossover scenes and references by providing notes at the end of the chapters in which crossover material appears. Thanks also to Sensey for comments provided on earlier drafts of this and other upcoming chapters.

Sensey has incorporated a number of characters from this story in _Shaak and Maris: a Star Wars Story,_ which is the lead-up to the popular _Ahsoka and the Rebellion_. Please check it out! Because I shared plans for yet-unpublished chapters with Sensey, one or two spoilers may result from reading it, but not ones that I imagine would detract from enjoying _The Way of a Siluan._

Now, let us begin.

 **The Way of a Siluan, Part II**

 **Chapter 25: The Hunter, the Hunted**

 **14 BBY 0 months 13 days**

It could not be. It should not be. But no matter how long Ry Kyver sat there in the pilot's seat of her compact passenger starship, arms folded across her chest, one black-booted leg up on the control panel, staring into the blue swirls of hyperspace, she could not change one simple fact: she had been stripped of her Force abilities, and that by a twig of a girl only a few years out of puberty.

Knowing that she had killed her was of no consolation. She had lost too much besides her Force-skill to be able to savour any sense of sweet revenge. The death of that blasted Siluan child should have been her triumph. It should have meant that she'd no longer have the Emperor's infernal prophesy hanging over her head, no more Vader haranguing her about its impending threat. It should have meant she would acquire the power to do all she had yet to achieve, to manipulate the midi-chlorians themselves and bend them to her will – and thereby prove that no one, no one, had the right to make her feel small. But instead...

A steady _beep, beep, beep_ signalled the impending drop out of hyperspace. Slumped there in the leather pilot's seat, Ry screwed her knuckles into her eyes and realized they felt like they were full of gravel. How long had she been sitting there staring into the blue swirls of hyperspace anyways? A glance at the chronometer told her that it was a full nine hours since she'd left Iwaki.

Somehow the thought of the planet where she had killed that unnamed girl made her feel sick, not bad or guilty but just plain physically sick to her stomach. _What's with that?_ she wondered, and then her stomach growled. She scrolled back through her memories of the last few days – the trip to Iwaki, and before that her visit to the planet Yalith, and before that the mind-numbingly late night in the lab, and before that Vader's unwelcome visit – and then realized that she hadn't eaten in almost forty-eight hours.

The beeping from the control panel grew more rapid and incessant. Ry shoved her hunger aside, took her leg off the control panel, sat up straight and yanked a big black control lever towards her, pulling her sleek little commuter ship out of hyperspace.

The blue-green disc of Takodana filled the forward viewport. Not because of, but in spite of what Ava Kirrin had said, she had chosen this as her destination. The sight of the planet stirred a wild hope in her, and even though she hardened her heart like a cage around it, hope would not be restrained: maybe, just maybe, in this place, she could recover what she had lost.

How that skinny Siluan girl could possibly have had the power to cause her such a loss in the first place was damningly inexplicable to Ry, but the effect was one she had read about in the Sith holocron that sat in her desk drawer back in her office on Ukio: according to the ancient wisdom of both Sith and Jedi, when opposing energies were brought together, there was the potential for a sort of cancellation to take place. As much as Ry couldn't stand to think that the girl she had killed was any match for her power, at least the explanation offered some course of action for a cure.

She had no intention of taking Ava Kirrin's advice to seek out Ava Gerges, not unless she could get her Force-skills back and so have no fear to return to the Emperor. Then it would be worth her while to have another kill to report. But Ava Kirrin's mention of Takodana reminded her of a place she had been years ago as a young woman, when she was still a young Jedi in the Agri-Corps, back when she had first learned to fly a starship well enough to make a trip on her own.

Back then, on her way from one Force-forsaken AgriCorps outpost to another, she had passed by Takodana. As she came in for a landing to stop for food at the cantina, a sunken patch in the forest called her attention, and the thought of it haunted her even while she ate her meal. She went there later and found something she had only read about but never seen before: deep beneath the trees, a swamp in which the plants were not green. They stretched tall stalks the colour of dried blood up from murky waters. Their pale, fleshy spathe-like flowers shed a heady and intoxicating scent, sweet without being at all floral.

What they were called by either locals or scientists she did not know at the time, but a little research later told her that these were the Umbraphytes, a type of myco-heterotroph, one of evolution's weirder offshoots of the plant kingdom. They needed no green to catch the filtered sunlight. Beneath the mucky soil their roots consorted with something of fungus-kind to suck life from dead and decaying things around them. And hence their scent, which mimicked the pheromones of some wild beast and drew them to be mired there. She could remember seeing the wet and slimy form of some deer-like creature floating in the dark water.

The memory did nothing to help that awful nausea that kept on dogging her; Ry swallowed hard and did her best to focus on the surface of the planet whizzing into focus below her: the leafy forests, shining lakes, and eventually the spires of an old grey castle that served now as the cantina. Some hundred kilometres beyond the cantina was that swamp. She would go there, she had decided, in hopes that what had been before would be again.

Almost twenty years earlier, when she was barely sixteen and newly come to the decision that she would take control of her own life, that she would use Light and Dark based only on the dictates of her own will, Ry had stood there on the edge of that strange swamp, breathing the heady scent of those blood-red and death-pale flowers and drinking up the dark power that pooled there.

It was in that dark nexus of the Force that she felt her way into corners of the Force that she had only ever dreamed of accessing. The skill of transmutation, which many even of the Jedi Knights failed to achieve, began to open up to her in that damp and humid place. With living things, she realized, transmutation was simply a variation of telekinesis. Only it was not about lifting rocks, but rather about shifting things too tiny to see: moving the proteins that act as transcription factors so that a gene in a bacterial cell would turn on or off; or transferring tiny groups of carbon and hydrogen atoms to change the methylation state of a stretch of DNA, and so un-writing or re-writing notes that plant cells had made about their environment.

This skill was not wholly unknown among the Jedi, but the few who possessed it tended to think this sort of intervention was against the will of the Force and used it sparingly. But for Ry Kyver, being able to bend a plant's very DNA to her will was a key she used to open door after door after door. It gave her an out from the drudgery of the Agri-Corps and an in with advanced laboratories in the Republic Agricultural Administration, and at last, it even opened the way for her to prove herself to the man who became Emperor.

Flying low over the trees now, Ry pushed the thought of the Emperor aside. If she didn't get her Force-skills back, there was no way she could stand the shame of facing him. She could only hope that the concentration of dark power there in the fetid swamp would allow her to tap back into the skills she had lost.

The ship's communication log, shown in blocky green letters on a little black screen to her left, showed several missed calls: mostly from Nathan, but three of them were from Vader. She had decided to return none of them. But just as she came to land her starship on a rocky outcropping near the dark-swamp, a simple text message flashed onto the screen: _The Emperor requires your presence within seventy-two hours_. It was from Vader.

Seventy-two hours. That was a deadline Ry didn't want to even begin to think about. Rattled, she overshot the swamp and had to make a sharp turn back to come in for her desired landing.

On top of a steep rocky outcrop beside the swamp, the starship touched down a bit more roughly than Ry intended. Even without Vader's message, that sense of dissonance, that nausea, that feeling of being in a fog that had haunted her ever since she killed that little Siluan made it difficult to do anything with normal precision. But she debarked and took a deep breath of fresh air. Then, climbing down the rock backwards with both hands for support, she steadied herself and came out under the shade of the trees with the strange tall un-green plants shedding their pollen in lazy clouds and casting their heady scent around her.

She breathed deep. Her head swam. She felt the energy of the place beat down on her. It felt almost like when she stood beside the supercomputer at IMAg, that whole-body sense of a being in a strong electromagnetic force-field, that radiation that people said wasn't perceptible to humans but she had to grudgingly admit she could feel.

Ry sat down on a damp fallen log and tried to start meditating. Her stomach growled. It would take less than half an hour to get over to the cantina, but for this to work, fasting would be her best bet, so there was no point eating anything now. It chaffed her, the thought that she couldn't just take what she wanted and get it, but she knew all too well that whether lightsider or darksider, all Force-users were bound by one thing: in the Force, there was always some form of balance. To acquire power, something else must be let go. Fasting was a way to be emptied in order to be filled.

And so Ry Kyver hardened her will against her hunger. She closed her eyes, tried to connect. Flies buzzed around her head. She hated them but hate too would help her.

 _Focus._ She began to recite an old mantra, one she had learned from a book the Emperor lent her back before he was Emperor and they used to just talk sometimes:

 _The Force is mine and I will claim it and wield it as I will;_

 _The Force is mine and I will take it and make of it what I will._

So ran one of many mantras of the Sith. _The Force is mine_ , she began again...

It was warmer in the swamp than she had remembered. The air was thick and heavy with the smell of death-flowers and swamp methane. Another wave of nausea hit her hard enough that her eyes flew open as she pitched forward and threw up.

Ry pushed herself up from the log and found a different place to sit, but the stink followed her. Seventy-two hours to respond to the Imperial summons, Vader had said. How long would this take? she wondered. _And if this doesn't work, then what?_

* * *

 **14 BBY 0 months 10 days**

"The three days have passed according to your prophecy." Vader paused to observe his master, who sat glowering into the darkness around him. But Vader stood dispassionate now, at ease with the cycle of each breath that rasped against the air around him. "She has not obeyed your summons," he added.

The Emperor's only answer was the clenching and unclenching of his bony fingers on the end of the armrest of his high throne.

Vader could not read his master's thoughts, not unless the Emperor allowed him, but he knew his master well enough to guess his fears. "It would seem," he said pointedly, "that she has indeed acquired the power you prophesied and turned it to her own ends."

The Emperor glared at Vader, yellow eyes smouldering under his dark hood. He did not need his own underling pointing out what he already imagined to be true.

"And have you done nothing to seek her?" he snapped, but Vader let a full two cycles of breath pass before he answered.

"I have inquired of the Ministry of Agriculture and there has been no report of her. The Imperial Security Bureau has likewise found nothing."

"And the Inquisitors?"

"I have requested that they focus solely on this search, but they have found nothing."

The Emperor made no answer, but glared down at the floor so hard that the sleek black surface smouldered and turned matt.

Vader decided to press his advantage. "The longer she remains at large, the greater her new powers may grow."

"Do you mean to tell me you have failed?" The Emperor shot Vader a dangerous look, laced with all the Force-feel of what happened to apprentices who fail.

"No, my lord," Vader said evenly. "I seek only your permission."

"For what?" the Emperor spat back.

"That I may enlist the aid of the bounty hunters."

The Emperor's face twitched with disgust. Vader knew what he was thinking: the ignominy of it! To resort to mere bounty hunters to bring back one of his own.

"With their help," Vader said, "you may yet get what you want from her."

The Emperor clenched his teeth. Would he get what he wanted from her? Would she, in fact, now yield up to him the secret Darth Plageous once learned, the way to control the midi-chlorians themselves? He could not doubt that she has acquired some new power. How else could she hide her presence from within the fabric of the Force? She was no match for him before, but if his prophecy was true, and he did not doubt it was true, she could make herself a force to be reckoned with. _All who have power are afraid to lose it_. His own words came back to mock him.

Power was not something he was willing to lose. "You may do so," he said, "but I am watching you, Vader. If you should fail in this task..."

Behind his mask, Vader smiled. "I will not fail," he said.

Now that Vader had what he wanted, he wished no further conversation with his master. He bowed and went out with his black cape swirling behind him, leaving the Emperor to gnaw at his thoughts.

* * *

With aching arms and shaky legs Ry Kyver approached the old cantina on Takodana. It was about five days since she had last eaten.

Even as the deadline for Vader's ultimatum came and went, she had sat by the dark-swamp, her head light with hunger and with the heady aroma of those fleshy death-eating flowers. But though she stayed in that damp place long after she grew to hate it, no renewed power came to her, only a sober clarity: her life as she had known it was over. She had lost her power and defied an Imperial summons. For that, she couldn't possibly just return to her post at IMAg.

Anger would come later. For now, she felt only hunger, determination, and a vague relief that the fog that seemed to wrap itself around her also shielded her from the dark self-loathing despair she had know that nightmare night in the lab. Her nausea was gone now, too, for the time being at least.

Ry walked up through the castle courtyard with its coloured banners hanging all around and a statue standing high over the door to the cantina: it depicted a diminutive woman, round-headed, arms raised to the grey sky. Ry glanced up at it but didn't look at it for long. As the door opened for her, the smell of beer and fried food wafted out and made her mouth water.

Inside, she breezed past the inviting fire pit (too many Zyrgygians emoting at each other with their long feathery antennae) and wove her way between tables of Rodians and Ithorians drinking something pink and Harmanians playing go-go ball at the game table and found her way to the bar.

"What'll you have?" the barista asked, a Mirialian with big hair and lots of jangly bangles.

Ry scanned the chalk-written menu. Her favourite burger was on the list, but hard experience had taught her to be careful what she ate coming off a fast.

"I'll have the chicken soup," she said.

The barista raised an eyebrow. "Nothing to drink?"

Ry wavered. Beer would feel good, but alcohol on an empty stomach would be a bad decision; she wanted to fly out of there again pronto. "Just the soup," she said.

The barista made a face, but bustled around getting a bowl and ladling soup out of a gleaming steel tureen, and then slid a steaming bowl of broth and dumplings over the counter to Ry. There was more green veg in it than Ry would have liked, but she took the hot bowl and found a seat as far as possible from the other patrons, then picked up the spoon and started to eat around the green stuff. The first sip of broth was sheer bliss.

Until she'd finished the last drop of soup, all but those unknown greens, Ry knew only a ravenous desire to eat. When she was finished, it took a while for her mind to clear, but when it did, buoyed by the flood of calories and protein that was finally hitting her brain, her plan for the future began to feel more solid.

From Takodana, she could go anywhere really, but her first priority would be to get somewhere where she could hack into the Imperial computer system and download her experimental data onto a disc. In her files there were yet un-released research findings that she could sell to any number of agri-business corporations that hadn't yet been amalgamated into Imperial AgSystems. But more importantly, there was the entire experimental protocol and records of her midi-chlorian project, her attempt to create cell lines with enhanced midi-chlorian counts, which might in turn be used to enhance a sentient's Force sensitivity.

She kicked herself for not making sure she had all that in her ship's computer, but there was no point wishing now. She'd just have to wipe from the Imperial computer system all the parts of the midi-chlorian project data that she hadn't told Vader about yet and keep it all for herself in hopes that she might yet be able to find some breakthrough on it. At least then she wouldn't be leaving empty-handed. Even if she was badly weakened, she knew that some spark of the Force remained in her. She would have to do it the slow way, but she vowed that she would work to revive her power again. If any breakthrough whatsoever could be found with the midi-chlorian project, it would help her immeasurably.

Ry cautiously watched the other cantina patrons laugh and talk and play cards and decided that she would have to keep a low profile in this new endeavour. She would get new contact lenses, she decided. Not dark brown but blue this time, and a different shade of skin paint. She debated what to do about her hair. She liked her hair too much to eith dye it or straighten it, but she also liked herself too much to let her hair give her away. As for where to go, Ukio was a bit too risky but she decided that she'd go apply for work with Imperial AgSystems on Marfa, even if it was just as a lab tech. Then she'd have plenty of chances to hack her old data, and knowing Vader, he wouldn't bother looking for her in a place like that. He hated all things rural, and it was so close to her old work that he wouldn't think she'd dare.

Now that she had a full belly, Ry felt so good that she could start to feel angry again, start to remember to hate that infernal fog around her, unseen yet making everything seem far away. Normally she could use the Force to read the people around her and use that to her advantage. Feeling suddenly cut off from all that information only made her feel more angry.

As Ry glared out at all those unreadable Ithorians and Zyrgygians and humans, a person came and took a seat nearby, not at the empty table next to Ry but the next one over. She sat down with a fat hamburger, the same one that Ry had been eyeing on the menu. Skinny Jim, it was called: a thick bun with three different kinds of meat and two different kinds of cheese with purple tomatoes and red lettuce and green pickles and lots of sauce. Ry felt her mouth water just looking at it. She watched the hamburger eater lift the burger to her wide-open mouth. Juice dribbled down the eater's muscled forearms as she sank her teeth in for a greedy bite. She leaned forward so that nothing would drip on her red tank top and closed her little pink eyes as she savoured her burger with a look of sheer bliss on her pinky-white face.

Ry watched with narrowed eyes in envy and scorn as the hamburger eater continued to eat, muscles flexing in her strong square jaw as she ate, taking big bites and chewing mouth half-open. Ry eyed the horns on the eater's head and concluded she was a Zabrak.

Ry noticed before the hamburger eater did that another person approached her table: another woman, also a Zabrak, pale-faced with spiky black hair and pointy black horns and sharp black eyes and all dressed in black leather, covered in silver studs and spikes, with a skull and blaster painted in white across her broad back. This punk Zabrak stood feet hip-width apart, hands crammed into her back pockets, and waited for the hamburger eater to jump when she realized she was being watched.

"Oh! Hey Trina! What's up?" the burger eater said, mouth half full. She gestured with one free hand for her friend to pull up a chair.

The punk Zabrak grinned and took a seat. "Thought I'd find you stuffing your face," she said.

"A girl's got to eat!" the eater said, and grinned with bits of burger showing between her sharp teeth. She swallowed and took a swig of beer.

"So you want in on a new job with me?" the punk asked.

"You still working for the Imps?"

"They make it worth my while."

"How much this time?"

"Ten...hundred...thousand credits." The punk enunciated each word distinctly, for emphasis.

The hamburger eater's little pink eyes lit up. "Nice!" she said, mouth half full. "Well, if we can catch him."

" _Her_ ," the punk corrected.

"Ooo! So girl on girl this time, eh? Should be fun. What's she about?"

"Name's Ry Kyver." Ry almost choked.

"Never heard of her. You got more info?"

The punk slid a datapad over to her friend, who wiped her hands on a napkin and then started pulling up holo-images. The first was of a fairly unremarkable human woman. Dark wavy hair framed a face with high cheekbones and wide dark eyes and a healthy glow to her dark complexion. It was an old image, the one the Imperial Security Bureau had put on file five years earlier when Ry was vetted for her position as Minister of Agriculture.

Ry looked furtively around her. The seat she had chosen was on the far edge of the room and the two Zabraks were between her and the door. She shifted uneasily in her seat and looked down at her empty bowl. She would leave, she decided as soon as she was sure she wouldn't draw attention to herself by getting up.

The hamburger eater flipped to the next holo-image. This one was an artist's rendition, but the sketch was all too accurate. It depicted Ry wearing the same black jeans and black denim jacket as in the last picture, the same shape to her face and eyes, but all semblance of her natural complexion was replaced by a pale and sallow grey. Yellow eyes gleamed out of that gaunt face.

The hamburger eater hissed and made a face. "Yikes, one of those, is she?"

"That's why the job's worth _ten hundred thousand_."

"Yeah, but those guys give me the creeps. And if she's that good at changing her appearance we're hooped."

"Nah-ah," the punk said and her eyes gleamed. "You can't change a retina scan. I've got all her biometrics in that file there. She won't get past my droid."

The hamburger eater scowled. "Your droid scares me," she said, and pulled up the next holo-image: a starship, sleek black, with IMAg logo emblazoned in yellow on the side, the Imperial crest circled by a shaft of wheat. Some digits below gave the ship's details.

"Hey!" the hamburger eater said and pointed at the picture excitedly, "I saw that ship!"

"Where?"

"Here, in the dock."

"You're kidding me."

"No bull, I'm sure I saw it. Same logo, same numbers. See, the last six digits of the registration code? 329545. I remember noticing it 'cause if you take the three and raise it to the power if two you get nine, then if you multiply nine by five you get forty-five, see?

The punk gaped for a moment, then let out a whoop and clapped her friend on the shoulder.

"That's why I like working with you, Pinky," the punk said. "You go check that out. I'll get your bill, scout here and meet you outside, K?"

The hamburger eater gulped the last of her hamburger, washed it down with a swig of beer, and went out. The punk scanned the cantina crowd, then got up and started to stroll casually around the room.

Ry sat, eyes carefully downcast, waiting until the punk's back was turned, then she tucked a twenty-credit chip beside her soup bowl, took her black denim jacket from the back of her chair and quietly slipped off to the washroom, which was directly behind her. Even in that old castle, the washroom cubicles were the same dura-plast grey as anywhere else. Ry locked herself in one of them and forced herself to breathe, breathe, breathe.

There was no way out. With that hamburger eater Pinky out at her starship she couldn't leave, and even if she could every bounty hunter in the Galaxy would be after her. And, she knew all too well, Vader. And the Inquisitors. They were no match for her before, but now...

It was then that something quiet asserted itself within her. _Go to Ava Gerges_ , it said. _You'll be safe there_.

 _There is no way on the face of this blasted planet that I'm doing that_ , Ry silently shot back, but the quiet voice stood its ground, wordlessly representing to her the one thing she would not escape even if she evaded capture: that damned haunting question of how that damned Siluan child could possibly have taken her power from her. _Maybe_ , the quiet voice said without saying, _Ava Gerges can help you understand._

Ry almost laughed out loud. _There's no way in the galaxy I'm telling him what happened. There's no way in the galaxy I'm telling him half of what happened._

Another voice took the opportunity to speak then, one more like Ry Kyver's normal self: _The weakness of Siluans is their compassion._

The gears of Ry Kyver's mind started turning.

 _You don't have to tell him everything,_ that third voice said. _You don't even have to tell him half of everything. All you need is a sob story._

There in the little grey washroom cubicle with the sound of someone flushing the toilet in the stall next to her, Ry smiled. She had a sob story. The best part was, it was perfectly true: she was a Jedi survivor, and the Lord of the Sith himself was hunting her. Ava Gerges would have no choice but to help her to hide. It would be his duty. And while she hid, maybe she could begin to understand even without having to ask him.

With that Ry felt she could breathe naturally again, and a bit of tension began to melt away. But she still had to go back out into the cantina.

Without having to make a decision, her hands found the knife in her jacket pocket. One handful at a time, she hacked off her long wavy hair, dark brown with streaks of early grey, and balled it up in her pocket. She had always been proud of her hair, but it looked gross now as it came off in thin handfuls; she tried to work quickly so she wouldn't have to look at it or think about it for long.

When she was finished, she pulled out two wads of dark hair from the bulging pockets of her jeans. With disgust she rolled them in toilet paper and hid them in the garbage can. Then she took her black denim jacket off the hook on the back of the toilet stall door and pulled it on. Before heading out into the cantina again, Ry did a quick check in the mirror. Her hack-job looked like just that, but at least she didn't look much like herself. Then she realized: her jacket would have to go. It was her signature item, the first thing she'd bought with her first paycheque back when she got her first paying job, but the bounty hunters would know it from those pictures they had of her.

Ry slipped back into the toilet stall and went through the pockets of her jacket: her knife went into the back pocket of her jeans, her blaster went to her beltloop, her keycard and ID card likewise went into her back pocket. Then there was her light-sabre...she held it for a moment, looking at the smooth, matt-finish of the bronze-coloured handle. She couldn't exactly walk around with it hooked to her belt, but it wouldn't fit down her boots either.

With a few deft twists Ry dismantled the light-sabre hilt. It meant nothing to her, just one of many attempts to craft a better handle. What mattered was the kyber crystal. She'd found it herself, all on her own, and she wasn't about to let it go now.

She popped it out into one hand and watched it gleam red. She couldn't hear it sing the way she used to, but it still had a sort of vibration to it that she could sense well enough. She crammed it into her front pocked. The bits of the hilt went in the garbage.

There was no turning back. Ry straightened her red shirt and squared her shoulders and went back out into the cantina. She couldn't see the punk Zabrak who was called Trina, and the other she assumed must be outside. She turned to a short, skinny Twilek boy who was wiping tables nearby.

"Where's the owner?" Ry asked, "I need to talk to her."

"Hey Maz!" the Twilek yelled over his shoulder in a twangy and decidedly non-Twilek accent, "Lady here wants to talk to ya!"

From somewhere in the crowd a little figure appeared, like a living version of the statue high above the castle entrance. If her face had been pointier, Ry would have sworn she was a big hairless rat.

"You need something?" the little woman called Maz asked.

"I need to talk to someone from the Gunma family. A friend told me to ask you for them," Ry said, smoothly bridging truth and lie.

What followed was something Ry entirely did not expect. Maz looked up at Ry and twisted the rims of her thick-lensed goggles so that her eyes became impossibly huge. Ry got a weird feeling in her stomach, like Maz was trying to look right inside her. She took a step back and looked away.

"You," Maz said, and Ry glanced back to see Maz wag a diminutive finger at her, "need to be careful."

Ry gaped, but before she could say anything Maz was motioning for her to follow. They threaded their way along the edge of the cantina towards the main entrance. Ry glanced back over her shoulder and saw Trina head to the washroom. _I have to get out before she gets back,_ Ry told herself, almost a vow.

"Wakeh!" Maz called out to a tall woman who was about to head out the door. "Someone wants to see you."

Wakeh turned around, and Ry bristled. She was never sure afterwards what she had expected Wakeh Gunma to look like. She certainly was not prepared for the woman who towered there in Mandalorian armour, blue with gold and pearl details, with a gleaming helmet carried under one arm. Her hair, braided tight against her dark scalp, was interwoven with threads of blue and red and gold. Her dark face was serious, but glowed with a health that Ry had not known for years. She stood a whole head taller than Ry, and looked down on her with one hand on the hilt of her blaster.

Ry hated people like that, people who weren't intimidated by her.

Wakeh cocked her head and looked at Ry as if she half recognized her and didn't like what she saw. When she spoke, her voice was a smooth and deep alto. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

Ry quickly pulled herself together. "Maybe," she bluffed brazenly. "My name is Sen, Sen Kaydo." She lowered her voice. "Please, I need to go see Ava Gerges."

Wakeh narrowed her eyes at Ry and looked her up and down. There was something familiar about this gaunt woman in the black denim jacket that she couldn't place and didn't trust. She wondered if she might be a drug addict; it wouldn't be the first time she'd ferried addicts to Ava Gerges for help. As a full-time smuggler and part-time bounty hunter, doing this was part of the truce she made with her conscience. But something told her that this person in the red shirt and black jeans didn't add up.

"Why d'you want to see him?" Wakeh asked.

"It's...kind of personal," Ry said, "but it would mean a lot to me." She glanced back toward the washroom. She didn't see Trina out yet, but time was running short.

Wakeh arched an eyebrow at her. "OK," she said, and put the hand of one muscular arm on her hip. "How are you going to pay for the trip."

Ry froze. She'd given the barista the twenty-credit chip she'd had earlier and left the rest of the her credit tiles locked in the safe on her ship. Her ship that she'd rather not be associated with right now. "I...I don't have much right now," she said slowly, trying to buy time while she felt in the back pocket of her jeans. She felt something oblong that fit smoothly into her searching hand. She let the weight of it rest in her fingers for a moment.

"I'll trade you this knife," she said, holding up the sleek blue handle into which the blade was folded. It gleamed in the light of the fire-pit nearby.

Wakah took it from her, examined it, opened the blade. It shone fine pale dura-steel, flawless, with tiny letters engraved on one side. She didn't stop to read them. She closed the blade and put the knife in her pocket.

Ry almost reached out to grab it back again. She had history with that knife. Not only that nightmare night in the lab, but before that. Nathan had given her that blade as a parting gift back when they first worked together, back when she was still in the Agri-Corps and scored her first chance to be cross-posted with a non-Jedi lab, with the Republic Agricultural Administration. She could remember the look on his face when he gave it to her. He wasn't just saying goodbye. He was saying _Please, I want you..._ She had laughed in his face, but she still took the gift of the knife.

A knife like that, with a blue pearl handle and dura-steel that fine, was worth at least two hundred credits on the used market. Wakeh figured it wouldn't cover the cost of the trip, but at least she'd have something to stack against the cost of her trouble if this Sen tried to pull anything stupid.

"And your blaster, too," she said.

Ry handed over her gun without a word but Wakeh still didn't look convinced.

Ry sized Wakeh up. With armour like that, Wakeh was obviously a Mandalorian, but that didn't make her a bounty hunter. Ry didn't think that a Siluan elder would consort with bounty hunters. She decided to take a risk.

"Please," Ry said and hoped she could stop using that word real soon, "I need your help. I need to get out of here. And I need to get to Ava Gerges. I have bounty hunters after me."

Wakeh looked beyond Ry into the cantina and motioned with her chin. "You mean her?" Ry turned and saw Trina scanning the crowd with casual deliberation.

"Yes," Ry said. "If my guy hadn't..." she let her voice trail off. She figured someone like Wakeh would go for that bit.

But Wakeh wasn't listening. She was watching Trina. She hated Trina. Trina had double-crossed her, twice. Trina was why she was in the mess she was in now. To pull a bounty out from under Trina was worth taking a risk. And if this Sen Kaydo really was trouble, she could always look up who had the bounty out for her and try collecting on it herself. Going by Ava Gerges' place was only a couple hours out of her way anyways.

Wakeh turned to Ry. "You got yourself a ride," she said and motioned for Ry to follow her out the door.

They wasted no time walking through the maze of ships in the dock outside, and came to a silver Corellian cruiser. Scoring along the hull and peeling trim showed the ship's age. It was Ry's turn to raise an eyebrow, but she followed Wakeh up the gangway without saying anything.

Inside the ship was considerably better kept than the outside. Ry tried to follow Wakeh into the cockpit, but with her sheer size Wakeh blocked the way.

"You," she said with a big finger pointing at Ry, "Sit in the hold. I fly the ship."

Ry held up her hands in exaggerated surrender. "No prob," she said, and took a step back. "But hey, what planet are we heading for?" Ry asked, now that they were out of earshot of the other customers in the cantina. She tried to sound casual but in her own ears her voice had too much of an edge to it.

Wakeh narrowed her eyes at Ry. Something about this Sen Kaydo still wasn't adding up for her. "How do you know about Ava Gerges anyways?" she asked.

"The Siluan elder on Iwaki told me."

"Ava Kirrin?" Wakeh asked, raising an eyebrow.

In her head Ry did a quick risk assessment. She didn't think Wakeh was trying to trick her.

"Yes," she said.

"And he didn't tell you?"

Ry tried not to cringe. "It's complicated," she said.

Wakeh rolled her eyes. "Look, go strap yourself in. I'll tell you where we are when we get there."


	26. Making a Deal

**Chapter 26: Making a Deal**

 **14 BBY 0 months 12 days**

Ry woke to a point of yellow-blue light piercing her half-open eyes and to a low rumble that she gradually realized must be the friction of a starship's hull against a planetary atmosphere. From that, Ry concluded that the starship must have reached their destination and pulled out of hyperspace. She groaned, stretched and realized that the planet's bright little sun was staring her full in the face through the side viewport. She smelled laundry detergent and felt something rough under her hands, though beneath her body the surface was soft.

When Ry had rubbed her aching, itchy eyes all the way open, she saw that she was curled up on a couch, covered in a coarse dark blue blanket in the passenger area of a starship. The passenger area was neat and tidy, with a little kitchenette at one end where a striped tea towel hung nicely off the handle of an oven on a miniature stove. The teatowel swung and cutlery in a drawer somewhere jingled as the starship hit a patch of atmospheric turbulence.

This was Wakeh Gunma's starship, Ry remembered. Asking a woman she'd only just met to take her to an unknown Siluan elder on an unknown planet somehow didn't seem like such a good idea to Ry now. Sure, she'd escaped from the bounty hunters back on Takodana, but what real hope was there that going to Ava Gerges would in any way help her get her Force skills back?

And beyond even beyond that, it seemed to Ry that no matter where the starship was headed, she was screwed. Vader or someone had authorized the release of her full biometrics to the network of bounty hunters, so going anywhere that was more or less inhabited meant running the risk of getting caught. But if Wakeh had Ry headed for some Force-forsaken backwater nowhere planet, how was Ry supposed to get her data back before someone shut down her account in the Imperial computer system?

As for Wakeh, she was nowhere to be seen. _Must be in the cockpit_ , Ry concluded, and swung her legs to the floor just as the starship hit a jolt of atmospheric turbulence. _Where in the galaxy are we?_ she wondered. She didn't like this, being shuttled who-knows-where by someone she barely knew. It made her feel tense and restless in a way that rode up and down her nerves.

She stumbled over to a round little side viewport on the left side of the ship as facing forward – realizing now that she'd slept in her boots – and squinted out onto the bright landscape as the ship hurtled towards the surface of the planet.

Under a blue-bronze sky stretched a flatland, covered in a grey-green fuzz in the distance but merely a textured tawny white-brown-grey under the path of the starship. In the far distance, she could see bare, rocky hills but no sign of sentient life.

Bracing herself for more turbulence, Ry walked as quickly as she dared over to the viewport on the opposite side of the ship. This view at least offered what looked like a dry riverbed and more hummocky ground nearby, towards which the starship veered, but beneath them was still that massive patch of dead tan-white-grey. Still, no sign of sentient life.

Back to the first viewport, with the ship headed at a slightly different angle, she could see hills as far to her right as the viewport allowed, but most of what she could see was just flatland, that dead zone stretching out almost endlessly beneath. At the far edge, three massive cranes reached slowly up and down and four mining crawlers crept across the surface of the land, sucking up minerals like bottom feeders on an ocean floor. _Probably just some contractor with droids_ , Ry thought bitterly.

She clenched her fists at her sides and seethed with cold, unspeaking anger. She'd lost more than she thought. This was not a place she wanted to be. How in the galaxy was she supposed to get her data from here? How in the galaxy was she supposed to get out of here when she was ready to go? There was no way she could rebuild her life in a place like this.

She turned sharply away from the viewport. No more turbulence at the moment, just the low rumble of the ship's hull against the atmosphere. She strode quickly over to the lavatory and shoved open the door, but before she could step inside she heard Wakeh's voice from behind the door to the cockpit.

"I never said it wasn't a good dress, I just said it was kind of expensive," Wakeh was saying. There was a pause, and the low sibilance of a whiny voice over the comm saying something that Ry couldn't quite make out. Wakeh sighed. "I'll tell you what," she said in a gentle but parental sort of voice, "if you can ace your grad thesis, I'll buy it for you." Pause, more voice of the comm too soft to hear. "I love you too. Just work hard at that thesis, K? But I got to land in a sec here, so tell your dad I'll call him later." More whispering of the comm. "Oh, sure, if it's quick, then put him on."

It occurred to Ry as she listened that even though Wakeh had taken her blaster, a sharp blow with a blunt object to the back of the head was all that it would take for Ry to knock Wakeh out and then take control of the starship into her own hands. She looked around for something that would do the trick, and pulled a compact mini fire extinguisher down from the wall.

"Oh yeah?" Wakeh was saying. "Send it to me. I'd like to have a look at that." There was a pause, and the voice on the other end of the comm had a firm and masculine sound to it. "No, but I'm on my way there now to check things out," Wakeh said, and the comm murmured again. "Yeah, I'll be careful, honey. But hey, I'm about to land. I gotta stop at Ava Gerges' place first." The comm-voice scratched out something that sounded concerned. Wakeh laughed. "Don't worry, it's OK. Love you, K? Talk to you later."

Ry listened, one hand resting on the cold handle of the cockpit door, the other tightly gripping the little red fire extinguisher. _Now!_ Ry told herself and went for it, but when she tried to slide the cockpit door open it wouldn't yield to her quiet pressure. Wakeh must have locked it, she realized. Fuming, Ry quickly and quietly clipped the fire extinguisher back in its place on the wall, then shut herself in the lavatory.

The lavatory was just a little closet of a thing with a compact toilet and a stainless steel sink, but Ry just turned on the tap without bothering to look at her morning-face in the mirror. When she rubbed her hands with soap under the lukewarm water, a trickle of pale brown came off in the water. Her skin-paint.

In horror, Ry realized that her hands now showed streaks of that awful Sith-grey that she was always so careful to hide from everyone except for people like Nathan and Vader who already knew. Then she looked at herself in the mirror and realized why her eyes hurt so much: she had slept with her dark-brown contact lenses in.

Shrieking curses in her mind, Ry slid the door open a crack and peeked out of the lavatory. She could feel in her stomach that the ship was slowing. Wakeh would still be in the cockpit. She quickly tiptoed out and checked for her handbag from beside the little couch where she'd slept. It wasn't there. All at once she remembered: she didn't have her handbag with her when she went into the cantina on Takodana. And she ditched her black denim jacket plus most of the parts of her light-sabre in the washroom of the cantina. Her beautiful pocket knife she had given to Wakeh. _Damn her!_ Ry thought.

Ry quickly searched through her pockets. All she had left with her was her red kyber crystal, her ID card and a couple of key cards for access to IMAg facilities. Not even a little travel pack of skin-paint.

Out the window, Ry could see the ground zooming closer. She went and shut herself tight in the lavatory again. By spreading out the paint that was left on her skin, she set to work to make her hands human-coloured again, but she couldn't help but think: her current veneer of normalcy would only last a few days at best. What was she supposed to do about that on a Force-forsaken planet like this? If she was to trick Ava Gerges into letting her hide here, she couldn't go letting him know who she was.

With a jolt of the ship and a rumbling grind that sent little shock-waves up through her feet, Ry realized that the starship had landed, wherever it was that they were. She quickly raked her fingers through her now-short curly hair. She hated this boy-cut look she had given herself but it would have to do.

The rattle and hum of the engine abrupted stopped. Ry heard the cockpit door slide open, and there was a knock at the lavatory door.

On the other side of the door, there was a sound that Ry figured was Wakeh clearing her throat. "Hey," Wakeh's voice said. "We're here."

"Yes, I'll be out in a bit." She was almost finished getting cleaned up but still needed a moment to finish getting her game face on before she had to deal with Wakeh.

"Ava Gerges is out there, so I'm going to head out and talk to him. Come as soon as you can, K?"

"Thanks," Ry said, remembering to play nice. She listened to the sound of Wakeh's boots walking away on the hard floor and then heard a rough grinding sound that she took to be the outer door of the old starship swinging open. "Wakeh, you've come!" a voice said, a little high-pitched for a man yet still somehow masculine. "Ava Gerges! So good to see you!" Ry heard Wakeh say. Ry thought she sounded much more relaxed when she spoke to Ava Gerges, more pleasant than the day before, or whenever it was that they left Takodana.

Wakeh's footsteps down the gangway and the sound of her and Ava Gerges' voices faded into the distance outside the starship. Ry did her best to brush her teeth without a toothbrush, then realized that there was a brand new one, still in its crinkly flimsiplast wrapper, sitting right beside the tap. She quickly tore it open. Wakeh must have left it for her, but she was not in the mood to feel grateful. Not with that unrelenting desert waiting for her outside the ship.

But once Ry had rinsed the taste of the licorice-flavoured toothpaste out of her mouth, double-checked her normal-human make-up and stowed the gifted toothbrush and borrowed tube of toothpaste in her handbag, there was nothing for it but to head out.

Wakeh had left the side portal of the starship open. Standing there in the bright daylight and the blast of hot, dry desert air, Ry looked down to see Wakeh standing several meters away, talking to a tall skinny Pau'un in a long black cassock. At least, it looked as if it must have been black before it was sun-bleached. But what struck Ry was Wakeh: the line of her shoulders had softened. Her whole demeanour looked somehow less assertive, more cordial, and she smiled with what Ry could only guess was real affection as she spoke with the old man. Ry folded her arms across her chest and scowled at them before remembering that she had to play nice if this was going to work. And so, she caught the old Pau'un's eye and smiled.

"Welcome here!" he called to her, then said to Wakeh, "So this is your passenger?"

"Ava Gerges, Sen Kaydo. Sen, Ava Gerges," Wakeh said, gesturing by way of introduction, with a slight edge creeping back into her voice.

Ry forced a smile and started to walk with a _k'dunk k'dunk k'dumk_ of her boots down the gangway and then a _crunch crunch_ along the sandy gravel of the dry ground of the planet. And then her foot hit something soft and springy. A pungent aroma filled the air, not sweet but vaguely unpleasant, a terpenoid smell. Ry looked down. There at her feet, among their fuzzy grey-green leaves, a host of sunny yellow daisies gazed up at her, undaunted by her presence.

In her mind, Ry cursed a blue streak. She knew where she was now. Memories of standing there with Nathan, the stupid little stinky daisies, the stormtroopers rounding up the Siluan monastics, the golden mist of her toxic cocktail trailing behind the massive spray-rig...but the loathing she felt at coming to this place wasn't shame. She knew why she had done what she did here on Yemer: she did it to prove to the Emperor that she was no less than Vader. That was the whole futility of it, that was her shame, to have worked so hard and come so far only to have it all come to nothing and end up here, a nowhere planet with no hope of even stealing back her own data so that she could rebuild her life. Smouldering anger woke up in her.

But if Jedi training had taught Ry anything, it was how to keep her cool. She walked up to Ava Gerges and extended her hand. "Nice to meet you," she said pleasantly, with a polite nod. "I'm so sorry to come without any notice, but Ava Kirrin said I'd better come to see you about something."

Ava Gerges shook her hand a little awkwardly and gave her a quirky smile. "No trouble," he said, "I'm always here. Usually anyways. I see our little Yemerian daisies were here to meet you."

"Oh, is that what they're called?" Ry said and gave a light laugh, pleased with herself for playing along so well.

"Anyways," Wakeh said, "I'll let you two talk. I got a couple of things to do before I take off, but I'll poke my head in to say bye before I go."

"Thank you, Wakeh," Ava Gerges said, and gave her a rather elegant half-bow. Wakeh bowed back, and turned to go, but not before giving Ry a look that said _I'm watching you._ "Thanks for getting me here," Ry said and smiled, pretending not to know what that look meant. She turned to Ava Gerges.

"May I call you Sen?" he asked.

"Sure." Ry shrugged.

"The sun is rather hot. Let's sit down inside." He motioned for her to follow him. Ry looked around and realized that they had landed in a flat spot among the hummocky ground she had seen through the viewport. Ava Gerges walked quickly towards one particular mound that was a little different from the others. It was about a meter high and at least five meters across and looked not unlike a huge version of the nests that mud-wasps make, all bumpy pasty earth dried pale on the outer surface. The plants around it looked somehow different too: not the scrub and sagebrush of the open spaces, but big spikey succulents with rows of thorns along their fat, juicy stems, with shallow piles of rocks mounded neatly around their feet.

Going around to the side of the mound that sat in the centre of these strange plants, Ava Gerges opened a little wicker door, a flimsy thing that was more a little gate than anything. They both ducked through it and went down a series of steps into a round room sunken into the ground. A series of round windows on the far side let in the natural light but it was pleasantly cool inside.

"Please take a seat," Ava Gerges said, and gestured to a little stool with a crocheted black-and-white seat cover. Ry sat down and looked around. The place looked tolerable, for the time being at least. There was a low bed at one side of the room and a compact metal biofuel burner near the door, which Ry assumed from the cast-iron skillet hanging nearby must be a primitive sort of cook-stove. On the floor at her feet was a colourful braided rug. From under the low wooden table that sat in the middle of the rug, Ava Gerges pulled out a basket of clay teacups and put two on the table, then pulled up a second stool and sat down.

"May I offer you something to eat and drink?" he said.

"Sure, if you're having something," Ry said lightly, but her mouth started watering. She hadn't eaten anything since that soup back on Takodana.

"I thought you might be hungry," Ava Gerges said, and reached under the table again. Out came a box which he opened with spidery movements of his long grey-brown fingers to reveal round honey-coloured wafers. From a thermos, he poured something clear into the teacups. "Please help yourself," he said and waited while Ry took one of the wafers.

"Oh, it's good," she said, not just playing nice but really meaning it. The wafers had a light nutty flavour and felt pleasantly filling, even if they were a tad dry. She took a sip from the little clay teacup. Whatever it was was surprisingly fresh and cooling, crystal clear like water but of a slightly more viscous texture.

Ava Gerges nodded politely. "I'm glad you like it," he said. "Those are what they call Yemer cakes, and the juice is from our friend outside." He gestured out the window behind him to where Ry could see a massive blue-tinged plant outside, all fleshy spikes with rows of thorns up and down them. "But," he said, and folded his long-fingered hands in his lap, "tell me, what brings you here?"

Ry swallowed her last bite of the wafer and studied him for a moment: his long grey-brown oval face and deep-set dark eyes, his straggly beard and the dark stone hanging from a pale cord around his neck. Pau'uns were known to live far beyond human lifespans, so Ry could only guess that he must be very old from the wrinkles on his face. But even if age could in any way index wisdom, he had a mild and unassuming look about him. Ry felt a swell of confidence: this was going to work.

"Well," she said and paused to take a sip of her drink for effect, "I was raised in the Jedi Order." She watched Ava Gerges carefully to gage his initial reaction.

He nodded knowingly. "You need a safe place to stay, don't you?"

Ry forgot to contain her look of surprise. "Well, yes," she said.

"It won't be a problem. The next mound over is a guest room." He gestured to his right with a smooth motion of his long arms. "I just need to put fresh linens on the bed and it will be ready for you."

For a moment, Ry sat stunned with her teacup waiting in her hand. She hadn't even finished half her story, but now here she was, forward momentum abruptly stopped, the engine of her mind all revved up with nowhere obvious to go. She took a sip of her drink and tried to gather her thoughts. "Thank you, I'm deeply appreciative," she said, reminding herself that she had what she wanted now: a safe place to lay low until she could learn what she needed to recover her power, and then get out. What she didn't have was an obvious route out of the moment of awkward silence.

Ava Gerges reached under the table again and pulled out a complicated apparatus: a set of four knitting needles, a ball of synthetic-looking yellow yarn and dangling from the needles, a knitted tube that Ry thought might be the beginnings of a long sock. _Clack clack_ went the knitting needles. Ava Gerges at least was at peace with the silence.

Ry took another sip of her drink and decided that she might as well find out what he knew. "Thank you," she said again. "But I see you've had your own troubles here. Was that some kind of dead zone we flew over on our way here? What can you tell me about it?" She watched him carefully. She was pretty sure she knew exactly how that happened, but his answers might be telling all the same.

Ava Gerges somehow managed all four knitting needles in one hand while he took a sip from his little clay teacup. "There isn't much I can tell you," he said. "It happened four or five years ago. I was away in the mountains on pilgrimage at the time, but when I came back the Yemerians who live just beyond the far side of it told me they saw an airship of some kind flying back and forth and spraying something, I don't know what. And now everything is dead there."

Ry made sure to look serious and sound sympathetic. "How many were killed?"

Ava Gerges raised a slender eyebrow. "You must know that it wiped out the entire monastery and some of the locals too. There aren't many of us left now."

"What a pity," Ry said softly, mournfully, and took another sip of her drink.

Ava Gerges shrugged and kept on knitting. "Yet shall the Light be unbroken," he said, making it sound almost casual and off-hand. "It seems they died well, from what the ground that received them has to say about it." He paused his knitting again, reaching down for his teacup with the little finger of his right hand elegantly extended. He took a sip of his drink and started knitting again. "But you must know all about that," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. "You were there after all."

Ry felt her upper arms and legs tense instinctively but forced herself to keep her cool. "What do you mean?" she asked, making sure to sound confused not defensive.

Ava Gerges sighed and let his hands and the knitting needles together come to rest in his lap. "Can I tell you a story?" he asked.

"Of course."

"You may not know, but back when I lived on Coruscant, before I joined the monastery, I was a psychologist. A very good psychologist, mind you." As he spoke, his hands came back up all by themselves and started knitting again. "I had a way of understanding people," he went on. "My clients liked that. But then other things happened: my partner died, and that was very hard for me. We had been together for three hundred years, you know. But a friend suggested that I come here to the monastery, to get away for a while, and so I did."

Ry nodded, wondering where on the face of the planet this was going.

"I didn't realize until I came here, to the desert, to this life to this work," he gestured to the plants outside the window and then to his knitting, "just how loud my life, even my mind was in those days when I worked on Coruscant. The more I became quiet, the more that sense of understanding grew within me. I could see, I could understand things without people having to tell me. It scared me, actually, when I first realized it, or rather, when I realized that not everyone finds this ability through their monastic practice. 'This is your gift,' my elder told me, but to tell you the truth," he said with a little laugh, "it sometimes feels more like a curse. It isn't fair, you see, if I can _see_ other people and they can't see me back."

Ry was staring at him with widening eyes now. She felt an explosive burst of energy building up inside her, ready to propel her somewhere, anywhere, but she forced herself to sit still. She couldn't just go bursting out of the door; Wakeh Gunma was still out there. "And your point is?" she said with more edge to her voice that she expected to hear.

Ava Gerges sighed and let his knitting fall to his lap. "I am telling you this so that we can have a clear understanding between us, not to accuse you," he said. "You are welcome to stay here as long as you need to, if you wish."

"And do what?" Ry spat back, then laughed grimly. There was no need to play at being a good visitor now.

"There must be a reason why Ava Kirrin sent you here, besides needing a place to hide. I'm sure he could have offered that himself."

Ry folded her arms across her chest. "You must know all about that, being a mind-reader and all!" she said scornfully.

Ava Gerges picked up his knitting again. _Clack clack_ went the needles. Ry stared at him in disbelief. At a time like this, he was going to sit there and _knit_?

"I see some things, but I don't see everything," Ava Gerges said. "And besides, this question: why are you here? What is it that you really want? Whether you choose to share your answers with me or not, it is very important for you to answer these questions clearly to yourself, at least."

Ry gave the same grim laugh again. "What do I want? I want back what she took from me."

Ava Gerges sighed and studied Ry's face, but his hands and the needles and the yellow yarn didn't stop moving. "You allude to things which I am not seeing at the moment," he said at last, "but would I be correct in surmising that your ability to use the Force has been compromised?"

Ry narrowed her eyes at him. "What makes you think that?"

To her surprise, something like laughter, all but restrained, flickered across his thin lips and deep-set eyes. "Because you haven't just reached out your hand in the air to choke me yet."

Ry almost laughed in spite of herself but forced a scowl instead. "That isn't funny," she told him, and then all at once the wicker door rattled violently as someone pounded at it from outside.

"Come in!" Ava Gerges said.

The tall and muscled form of Wakeh Gunma burst into the room. Her eyes narrowed when she saw Ry.

"Do you know who she is?" Wakeh demanded of Ava Gerges, pointing a big accusing finger at Ry.

"More or less," Ava Gerges said. He spoke calmly, but he stopped knitting and his hands came to rest in his lap.

Wakeh's face quivered with restrained anger. She took a deep breath and turned to Ry.

"Sen Kaydo," she said quietly, "does the name Ry Kyver mean anything to you?"

Ry folded her arms across her chest and looked at Ava Gerges to see what he would do. He shrugged. "No," she lied brazenly. "Never heard it."

Wakeh snorted. "Look, your game's up," she said and tossed something that Ry just barely managed to catch before it hit her in the face: a hard, oblong object, cool and slim and just slightly heavy in her hands. She opened her fingers and saw a flash of blue. It was her pocket knife.

Wakeh folded her arms across her chest. "You read what it says on the blade lately?"

Ry wrapped her fist tight around the folded knife. She wasn't going to submit to open it to see, not in front of Wakeh. Long years and the mess of everything that had happened since she went to Iwaki had wiped it from her mind, but with a sinking feeling in her stomach, she remembered. Long ago, when she was given that knife, her colleagues in her first-ever non-Jedi workplace had pooled funds to inscribe the blade that Nathan was giving her. Engraved on the fine durasteel blade were the words: _Ry Kyver, the power is yours._

Ry glanced at Ava Gerges. She could lie and say she'd stolen it...or would Ava Gerges' reaction show the truth?

"If she is who you think she is, what difference does it make?" Ava Gerges cut in, putting his knitting down on the little table with the teacups.

"My brother is in an Imperial prison camp because of an order she signed."

Ava Gerges raised an eyebrow and turned to Ry. "Is this true?"

"I have no memory of it," Ry said emphatically. She had, in fact, signed many forms authorizing the use of Imperial prisoners to do the grunt work at various IMAg experimental stations. She had never bothered to pay attention to what names were on the lists.

"Oh, yes you did," Wakeh said. "You signed off on an order for Imperial prisoners to work at the slaughterhouse on Arum. He was on the list." This much had months of gruelling reconnaissance taught Wakeh and the rest of the Gunma family.

Ry scowled. "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do about that now," she said, but even to her, it sounded like a mere formality.

Wakeh rolled her eyes. "Damn well there is! I know about the bounty. If you don't help me get him out, I'm going to collect it."

Ava Gerges glanced from one to the other. "But wait..." he began, sounding almost anxious.

Ry, however, was not going to wait. The gears of her mind were turning and now they had somewhere to go. The facility on Arum was an IMAg experimental station. The computer in the control room would be connected to the Imperial network. She could log in and download her files, then get out and go on her way.

"No," Ry said, "I'll help you. But I know that place. It's complicated, so you'll have to take me with you for this to work."

"Na-ah," Wakeh said, "and let you blow the whole thing?"

"No, remember?" Ry said, "There's a bounty out for me. I don't want to get caught any more than you do. But to do what I would need to do, I need to be there. Otherwise, it'll be hard to get through without tripping the security."

Wakeh scowled. This was not what she'd wanted. She wanted Ry to tell her how to get in and then get this done with Ry Kyver safely locked up on her starship while she and her sister took care of it. But from what she'd learned about the facility on Arum, Ry just might have a point.

"So what's your plan?" Wakeh asked grudgingly.

Ry Kyver smiled. A plan had crystallized in her mind. "To start with, we'll both need wetsuits..."


End file.
